A recent headline carried around the world certainly caught our eye as it proclaimed “Mont Blanc Growing Due to Global Warming.” When we first saw the piece, we fully expected to read about a process called isostatic rebound. If you are rusty in basic earth science principles, isostatic rebound occurs when weight is reduced from the earth’s crust (as is the case when a substantial amount of ice disappears from a region), the crust rebounds upward, and the land surface increases its elevation with respect to sea level. Oppositely, when ice accumulates over a region (e.g., Greenland, Antarctica), the crust is depressed, sometimes well below sea level. So when we first saw the piece about Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, we assumed the article would be about how melting of the mountain glaciers has now led to crustal rebounding and a higher summit. However, we were in for a huge surprise.

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Recently the press was more ablaze than California with NASA proclamations that the surface area of Greenland had melted in 2007 at a record-high rate. This is true, if the record only extends back only 20 years or so—which is the case of the NASA dataset. If you could peer back a bit further into the past, say back into the 1950s, it is quite likely that the melt area in Greenland then was about the same as it is now, effectively rendering the 2007 melt area hardly newsworthy. Just another NASA climate-change exaggeration?

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The recent wildfires in California have certainly provided an opportunity for the greenhouse crusade to further claim that global warming is already increasing fire frequency, duration, and intensity all over the planet. In the midst of the disaster in California, Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters that “One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming.” However, when pressed by astonished reporters on whether he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster. Since then, literally hundreds of newspaper articles appeared throughout the country reinforcing the idea that emissions of greenhouse gases have warmed the earth, dried the forests, and made fires a lot worse.

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This figure, labeled as “Sea-ice Extent: Northern Hemisphere” was presented by Al Gore in the book version of his science (fiction) movie An Inconvenient Truth. But is this depiction of the Arctic sea ice extent over the course of the 20th century even close to reality?

Probably not.

Figure 1. Arctic sea-ice extent as depicted by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth. (source: An Inconvenient Truth, p. 143)

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An intense storm struck the northwestern tip of Alaska during the fall of 1963. This storm caused over 3 million dollars in damage, primarily to the U.S. Government research camp that was located at Barrow, AK, as 55mph winds (gusting to 75mph) and waves topping 10 feet pushed a storm surge over the 10 foot high protective beach. The storm hit during an unusual ice-free period in early October—the primary reason why the seas grew to such damaging heights. During most months there, near shore sea ice coverage is sufficient to dampen (or prevent entirely) the build up of significant wave heights. James Hume and Marshall Schalk, described the damage from the 1963 storm in an article written for the journal Arctic in 1967 and based upon historical weather records and the recollection of Inuit elders, reckoned that the storm was about a “200 year” storm.

This storm, and others like it, should have served as ample warming against settling on the unstable coastline of much of Alaska. Instead, today we here repeated reports of recently-established native Alaskan villages having to be moved inland because of an encroaching ocean—and the culprit is always anthropogenic global warming, never lack of foresight.

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Recently, former Vice President Al Gore won a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to our understanding of the global warming problem. His film was seen as a masterpiece that certainly sealed the deal on his Nobel Prize. However, on the same day the Nobel committee honored Gore, world renowned hurricane specialist Dr. William Gray told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the Earth and not responsible for alter hurricane patterns, as strongly suggested in the Gore film. Gray told the crowd “They’re going to the Gore movie and being fed all this,” and “It’s ridiculous. The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures.” Dr. Gray said there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949 in a period of cooler global temperatures compared to 83 hurricanes between 1957 and 2006. Don’t look for Dr. Gray to receive a Nobel Prize anytime soon.

As we sit through a ho-hum year in terms of hurricanes (a.k.a., tropical cyclones) in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, another article has appeared in the professional literature with results that call into question any prediction about more tropical cyclones in the future. The latest work comes from a team of scientists with China’s Shanghai Typhoon Institute and is published in the Chinese journal Acta Oceanologica Sinica (you may notice a few misspelled words and odd phrases in some quotes from the article). The work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Special Climate Project of China’s Meteorological Administration.

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A couple of weeks ago, New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin wrote a piece titled “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts” in which he described this year’s record low Arctic summer sea ice extent and the how the dramatic decline over last year had caught many sea-ice scientists by surprise. Revkin goes on to interview a variety of experts on the topic of sea ice, most of which realize that some (most) of the sea ice decline observed over the past several decades is likely related to anthropogenic changes to the earth’s climate, while admitting that undoubtedly, some natural (non-human-influenced) processes likely contributed to the decline as well.

Revkin starts out by noting “astonished by the summer’s changes [in ice extent], scientists are studying forces that exposed one million square miles of open water—six Californias—beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.”

And then he continues:

Proponents of cuts in greenhouse gases cited the meltdown as proof that human activities are propelling a slide toward climate calamity.

Arctic experts say things are not that simple. More than a dozen experts said in interviews that the extreme summer ice retreat had revealed at least as much about what remains unknown in the Arctic as what is clear. Still, many of those scientists said they were becoming convinced that the system is heading toward a new, more watery state, and that human-caused global warming is playing a significant role.

For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance. Many scientists say the last substantial warming in the region, peaking in the 1930s, mainly affected areas near Greenland and Scandinavia.

Depending on what Revkin meant by “recent times,” perhaps we could help him out as to where he may look in order to find out some information indicating that “widespread Arctic ice retreat” has occurred without any human help. If Revkin meant “since satellites started measurements in 1979” then, he probably has that covered, but if by “recent” he meant within the past 100 years or so, then maybe we could suggest a few other avenues to investigate.

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The findings by the UK judge announced last week that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth failed to tell the whole truth on more than a few occasions received a fair degree of press coverage and, of course, a great deal of outcry from Gore defenders worldwide.

Now, “the Gore Team” has come to its own defense on a Washington Post blog site. In running down the list of supposed “errors” in An Inconvenient Truth, it is the basic contention of the Gore team that the scientific issues that Gore was trying to get a cross to a lay audience were far more complex than he had the time (or desire?) to adequately explain in a 90-minute feature film (or in the accompanying 328 page book; hint, use a smaller, albeit less dramatic, typeface next time).

For instance, concerning Gore’s use of the glacier recession on Africa’s Mt Kilimanjaro (through a series of historic photographs and flowery language) to illustrate the effects of global warming, despite the fact that the majority of scientific evidence is that factors other than temperature (such as exposure, humidity, and precipitation) are primarily responsible to the loss of ice atop the mountain, the Gore Team justifies that, well, global warming is undoubtedly making things worse there.

This sentiment, that, well, even though it may not be the primary cause, anthropogenic global warming is making things worse, is used in their justification of the Gorey pictures of the damage from Hurricane Katrina (even though we showed picture after picture of the damage from Katrina we never “ascribe any single weather event to climate change”), destruction of coral reefs, drowning polar bears, the drying of Lake Chad, and the flooding of low-lying Pacific islands.

Ultimately, the Gore Team has the following to say, acting dismayed at the state of media coverage these days, “To conclude, it’s unfortunate that news coverage of the UK decision was so sensational and, once again, directed conversation away from a broader and much-needed discussion and debate about solutions to the climate crisis.”

So sensational?!

Apparently showing photo after photo of current and potential future environmental catastrophe (carefully ignoring instances of similar catastrophes in the past) while talking and writing in grave tones about climate change and mankind’s role in it, but never admitting that many other factors are also at play and in many cases are the dominant ones, is a perfectly acceptable way of conveying issues to the public. But, pointing out that this is what is going on is “sensational.”

It seems to us, that the Gore Team is just a bit miffed that someone stole a page out of their playbook and successfully ran it against them.

The other week the busy little bees who are working on Nobel Al’s new book… what, you didn’t know Gore was working on a new book? Yep, apparently in the works is a book on climate change and its solutions, supposedly titled “A Path to Survival” in which Gore lays out, well, you can probably figure that out. As we have detailed previously Gore is more than just a little out there when he starts talking about the climate change threats to human’s survivability on Earth. So, we don’t yet know whether his new title will be shelved in the science or science fiction section.

But, as we were saying, the other week the busy little bees who are helping out on Al Gore’s new book sent a call out looking for photographs or other particularly useful information that could be used to illustrate the impacts of melting permafrost and changes to the environment that may result. The request was for images or charts that could be incorporated in a chapter on “permafrost melting” (as a technical point, because we’re sure that Gore will be paying more attention to the details this time around, permafrost—any type of soil that spends most of its time below freezing, whether or not any water is present—doesn’t ‘melt’ but rather, it ‘thaws’). And although it wasn’t specifically mentioned, we’re sure they meant “The more dramatic the better!”

Always interested to help out, we thought that we’d offer up a few images that we recently came across in our on-going effort to compare current conditions in the Arctic with conditions earlier in the 20th century.

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We at World Climate Report have been spending some time over at the local library digging through some old journals looking for information about climate conditions in Greenland during the early-to-mid 20th century—a time when it pretty well established that much of Greenland was as warm, or warmer, than it is presently. This fact, however, seems largely ignored by alarmist scientists and the media who continue to turn up the volume on rhetoric claiming that Greenland is experiencing events that have not been experienced there for time immemorial. Knowing what we do about the climate history of Greenland, we can’t help to wonder whether time immemorial only extends back about 50 years or so.

We will present what we uncover through a multi-part series of World Climate Reports under the general title, “Greenland Climate: Now vs. Then.”

In our first installment, we’ll briefly review the temperature history of Greenland over the course of the 20th century, setting the stage for future articles in which we’ll visit topics that have been in the news recently such as record levels of surface melt extent, rapidly retreating glaciers, surface mass balance estimates, and “warming islands.”

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