Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it'

Pine Island GlacierHuman CO2 just not a big deal at Pine Island Glacier

By Lewis Page –

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf’s melt does not result from human-driven global warming.

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and its associated sea ice shelf is closely watched: this is because unlike most of the sea ice around the austral continent, its melt rate has seemed to be accelerating quickly since scientists first began seriously studying it in the 1990s.

Many researchers had suggested that this was due to human-driven global warming, which appeared to be taking place rapidly at that time (though it has since gone on hold for 15 years or so, a circumstance which science is still assimilating).

However back in 2009 the British Antarctic Survey sent its Autosub robot probe under the shelf (famously powered by some 5,000 ordinary alkaline D-cell batteries on each trip beneath the ice, getting through no less than four tonnes of them during the research). The Autosub survey revealed that a previously unknown marine ridge lay below the shelf, over which the icepack had for millennia been forced to grind its way en route to the ocean. However in relatively recent times the ice had finally so ground down the ridge that the sea could flow in between shelf and ridge, freeing the ice to move much faster and warming it too.

Read the rest at The Register.

10 Responses to Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it'

  1. Eugene McGuffy May 13, 2014 at 10:20 am #

    So , Dan, you consider yourself to be on the Right. Interesting.

  2. trevormarr November 19, 2015 at 5:23 am #

    In 2015, AGW now is defined as Al Gore’s Wrong!!!

  3. Dan McGrath February 26, 2014 at 4:07 pm #

    I have some questions about the timelapse. It leaps over several years, for one thing. Why? It doesn’t look like photographic evidence, but rather, a computer animation or some other kind of manipulated reconstruction. What do the original source images or data look like? What months do each of the “snapshots” compiling the timelapse represent? All that’s given is a year.

  4. Neilio February 26, 2014 at 10:24 pm #

    Dan, I think you have missed the obvious thing to point out about the time lapse. It’s not of the Pine Island glacier. The article is about the Pine Island glacier, why did they use a time lapse of a different glacier?
    I have some questions of my own about this post, like why do they say that it’s you making the claims when it is an article from the Register that you posted on the site?

    Another is why he thinks you’ve buried your head in the sand while the US is experiencing one of the COLDEST winters for decades.

    And then there’s the mention of research that isn’t cited in the article, but if you read the rest at the Guardian it is cited, and it is a peer-reviewed paper in a scientific journal. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/343/6167/174.abstract

    This is just ripe for the picking. I love the NASA says 97% of the world’s climate scientists agree line. I just have to shake my head that anyone in their right mind still believes that. Even if it were true the thing people don’t understand is that all of those scientists, and scientific organizations base that opinion on what computer models say. And those models are all wrong.

  5. Dan McGrath February 26, 2014 at 10:42 pm #

    Sure. I didn’t want to pile on right away, though. As far as mistaking me for the author, that’s an easy mistake, since my name appears above the authors because I “curated” the article.

    Despite the arctic blasts that have been leading to record cold temps, the warmists control the idiot box and the box keeps saying it’s still getting warmer, so rubes assume it must be blazing hot elsewhere. And on and on… I can’t argue with you. I hope this fisker pops back to join the conversation.

  6. Alan Falk July 4, 2014 at 9:43 pm #

    Niellio, your comment brought to mind for me a brand new question; one I’ve never heard asked or answered…

    If, allegedly per NASA, 97% of the world’s scientists agree… and virtually all of their agreement is due to agreement of their computer models’ output… one must ask what percentage of them have created their OWN computer models, versus how many are using the SAME computer models?!

    A thousand identical models will produce identical results, given the same input ‘guesses’, so correlation is meaningless, as is ‘agreement.’

    Missing data, once again, leads to bad conclusions.

    And yes, my education IS in engineering, but 25-30 years in marketing also taught me that ‘facts are not necessarily the basis of a successful sale…’

  7. Dan McGrath February 26, 2014 at 10:48 pm #

    Oh, and plus, the left LOVES to HATE me.
    http://www.mnpact.org/sblog/blog.php?id=3619 – #6 “Worst political person in Minnesota”
    http://www.mnpact.org/sblog/blog.php?id=3976 – #2 “Worst political ‘person’/organization in Minnesota” – Progress! Hoping for #1 next year! I hope they give out medals. I’d wear it around my neck every day.

  8. neilio February 27, 2014 at 5:57 am #

    You know they won’t. This isn’t a conversation, this is ringing the doorbell and running away.

  9. Neilio July 5, 2014 at 5:03 am #

    That is an excellent question. I think the vast majority are using the same models because there are very few super computers out there that are used for climate modeling. And even fewer climate scientists are actually involved in computer climate modeling. One of those is James Hansen, a partisan political environmental activist. Gee, no bias there.

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