Skeptic scientist rips bed-wetting author of press article making false and alarmist claims about melting Arctic ice, rising sea levels, and other climate ‘catastrophes.’
Anglo-Dutch retired Chemical Analyst, with lifelong expertise in the effects carbon dioxide (CO2) has gotten so sick of gullible journalists eager to promote alarmist junk climate science that he been re-educating one such peddler of poop, Fred Grimm for his story ‘New studies and new catastrophes give climate change deniers a lot to deny’ (Miami Herald, August 10, 2017).
Schreuder wrote to Grimm after reading Grimm’s grim piece which featured the photo (above) of Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica traversing the Northwest Passage. The scientist’s email to Grimm went:
Mr. Grimm,
RE: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fred-grimm/article166587642.html
From your above-mentioned article, one gets the impression that you didn’t do enough research before putting pen to paper. Allow me to fill you in, so you may be better informed.
1. The official record: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northwest-passage-msv-nordica-1.4227619
Records kept by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans show that the previous earliest passage of the season happened in 2008 when the Canadian Coast Guard ship Louis L. St-Laurent left St. John’s in Newfoundland on July 5 and arrived in the Beaufort Sea off Point Barrow, Alaska, on July 30.
2. The earlier record: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage
For centuries, European explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia. An ice-bound northern route was discovered in 1850 by the Irish explorer Robert McClure; however, it was through a more southerly opening in an area explored by the Scotsman John Rae in 1854 that Norwegian Roald Amundsen made the first complete passage in 1903–1906. Until 2009, the Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year. Arctic sea ice decline has rendered the waterways more navigable for Ice navigation.
It, therefore, appears that the earliest complete NW Passage was achieved in 1906, just over a hundred years earlier than the official Canadian record.
Somehow, the official record of a 2008 passage did not make it into the Wiki records, which state that “until 2009 pack ice prevented regular shipping”, so maybe in 2008, it was just one single icebreaker that made it through and not along the main passage?
Next, let us look at how many options there are for making it through that NW Passage. From that same Wiki page, I copied this image for you:
There are quite a few routes to chose from and the route that was taken by your quoted Finnish icebreaker appears to have been the most southerly one, as it would not have been possible to use the wider and more navigable northern route, which is the only one that would support regular shipping.
As of yesterday, that more northerly route was still solidly frozen, as can be ascertained on a daily basis from this satellite derived Bremer University site:
https://seaice.uni-bremen.de/data/amsr2/today/Arctic_AMSR2_visual.png
Here is a copy of the specific area mentioned above [from 12 August 2017]:
From the above-detailed image of the various NW Passage routes, it is clear that only a carefully selected tortuous southerly route was an option for an icebreaker to get through.
As a reporter, you should be aware that many a vessel has been caught short in trying to navigate the NW Passage in the recent past.
In conclusion, I put it to you that your article was merely intended as a headline grabber and had little basis in fact. The trip that you reported on was just another one of those sensation-seeking trips to blame humans for their emissions, which you and others allege are “melting the Arctic”.
Please take the time to read two factual peer-reviewed papers about the true role of carbon dioxide in our precious atmosphere:
http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_CO2-EaE.pdf and
http://tech-know-group.com/papers/Role_of_GHE-EaE.pdf
Maybe one or more of your scientific friends would be available to comment on those papers. Ask them for some factual evidence linking human produced carbon dioxide to climate change.
For the record, I am not a climate change “denier”. But I do deny that human activities via their carbon dioxide emissions are changing the climate because there is no scientifically verifiable process by which a gas can make the surface from where it acquired its energy any warmer than it already was – cooling may occur but never warming.
At worst, human activities will cause localized pollution, such as forest clearing fires in South America and Indonesia, but those effects remain local.
Read more at PSI
Well, you had better think again. Here’s an example – someone throws away a plastic bag of bottle. In a couple of years it ends up in that Texas-sized plastic island in the middle of the Pacific.
Pollution put into the atmosphere (because it’s cheap disposal) certainly has global effects.
The Arctic ice-sheet is in reality a large icecube which floats in the Arctic Ocean.
If the Arctic ice all melted, sea-levels would not be affected. You can prove this with a simple experiment you can do at home.
Take a jug, fill it half-full of water and put a large ice cube in the water. Mark on the jug the top level of the water. Now wait.
The ice will melt, becoming water and will mix with the other water in the jug. Eventually, all the water in the jug will come up to room temperature. Look at your mark. The water level won’t have changed. How come?
The answer is simple science. When an ice cube floats in water, 90% of it is under the water and 10% is above the waterline. To understand what happens next, remember that when water freezes, it expands. ( That’s why pipes burst when the water in them freezes. ) The opposite is also true: when ice melts, it contracts to a smaller amount of water. So the 90% of the ice cube under the water will actually lower the waterline as it melts.
Let’s not forget the 10% of the ice cube that’s above the waterline: when that melts, it contracts too. However, the melted ice – now water – adds to the water in the jug to bring the water level back to the mark on the jug. So, no change in the level.
But what if the Arctic ice were to melt completely? From our little experiment with the jug and the ice cube, we’ve seen that the sea level wouldn’t rise at all. The Northwest P:assage would be permanently open to shipping, saving shipping lines massive amounts of time and money. The polar bears would migrate south and perhaps revert to being the black bears they once were. We’d have no more daft people trekking to the North Pole and getting frostbite; no intrepid sailors trying to sail to the North Pole and getting stuck in the ice half-way. Finally, the several nations who lay claim to the North Pole would see their flags floating away, removing a source of potential conflict. A win-win, I’d say.
Al Gore: in 2008, he predicted that all the Arctic ice would have melted by 2013. Four years later, it’s still there, Al.
A few points Aido.
1) Loss of sea ice means more solar radiation enters the ocean as it was previously reflected by the ice thus warming the ocean more thus melting more ice – a positive feedback.
2) Greenland’s ice sheets (land ice)are prevented from sliding into the ocean by sea ice blocking them.
3) A warming Arctic also means melting methane ice blocks and warming permafrost – both of which adds more greenhouse gasses into the environment.
While that is true, a lot of ice is over land masses like Greenland, Siberia, Canada, and Antarctica. When that ice melts sea levels rise.
The reason that the global warming wackos don’t want to debate Global Warming/Climate Change is they don’t want to be shown as the liars they are and they don’t want to lose all that moola from the usial suckers dumb enough to believe them
No, that’s not the reason at all. They are concerned about man’s effect on the planet. Unlike the businesses that make heaps on money out of pollution, scientists don’t make much at all.