Antarctica

From Ice-Caps to Polar Bears, The Left Gets It Wrong

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted in 2014)

This is connected to an older post titled, “Inconvenient Truths for FactCheck.org” which should also be part of a 2014 Christmas discussion titled, “Polar Bear Fraud ~ Highest Levels Eva!“

Via the Daily Mail:

Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

  • Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore’s warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
  • An area twice the size of Alaska – America’s biggest state – was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
  • These satellite images taken from University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

CLIMATE DEPOT – Headlines Come and Gone

UPDATED INFO

“Numbers are so high that Inuit leaders have been pleading with the Canadian government for more polar bear population control as violent attacks against native populations have dramatically risen in recent years,” pointed out Marc Morano at the Climate Depot website, which presents evidence countering the claim that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming.

A decade ago, many scientists predicted the population of polar bears would be down by 67 percent about now.

But the report by zoologist Susan Crockford, writing for the non-partisan Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank, found that the bears are thriving.

[….]

The possible current population total of 29,500 “is a far cry” from the 7,500 “we were assured would be all that would remain.”….

via NO TRICK ZONE:

Ten years ago, polar bears were classified as an endangered species due to model-based assumptions that said the recession of Arctic sea ice would hamper the bears’ seal-hunting capabilities and ultimately lead to starvation and extinction.

The Inuit, who have observed these bears catch seals in open water for generations, disagree.  At least this is what scientists have found upon investigation.
“There is no evidence that the fast reduction of sea-ice habitat in the area has yet led to a reduction in population size.” (Aars et al., 2017 )

Inuit observations: “…back in early 80s, and mid 90s, there were hardly any bears … there’s too many polar bears now.  Bears can catch seals even—even if the—if the ice is really thin… they’re great hunters those bears … they’re really smart … they know how to survive.” (Wong et al., 2017)

Inuit observations: “No, because polar bears can go and follow the seals further [if sea ice retreats], so they won’t have trouble hunting. Also the snow covers the [seals’] breathing holes but polar bears can still hunt, it’s just for people. There is more rough ice, more thin ice. But it won’t affect polar bears’ hunting.” (Dowsley, 2007)

“Reduction in the heavy multiyear ice and increased productivity from a longer open water season may even enhance polar bear habitat in some areas. … It seems unlikely that polar bears (as a species) are at risk from anthropogenic global warming.” (York et al., 2016)

Sometimes the “Western scientific understanding” of how the natural world operates conflicts with observations.

“The view of polar bears as effective open-water hunters is not consistent with the Western scientific understanding that bears rely on the sea ice platform for catching prey.  … [Participants] indicated that polar bear body condition is stable; they cited the fact that polar bears are capable of hunting seals in open water as a factor contributing to the stable body condition of the bears.” (Laforest et al., 2018).

The paleoclimate evidence, which shows that sea ice was thinner and less extensive than today for most of the last 10,000 years, also contradicts the assumptions about modern polar bear endangerment due to thinning ice.  One must ask: How did polar bears survive sea ice free summers in the ancient past if they existentially rely on thick sea ice to hunt prey today?

When the observations don’t agree with the models and assumptions, real scientists are supposed to reconsider their hypotheses.

[….]

In the 3 new papers referenced below, extensive observational evidence suggests that polar bear populations are currently healthier than in the past, and their numbers have been stable or growing in recent decades.

(LINK to read the papers)

Read more at WHAT’S UP WITH THAT. Here is more info on the Polar Bear numbers — because they are associated with sea ice:

New SURVEYS have shown that

“The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

The study shows that “the bear population is not in crisis as people believed,” said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. “There is no doom and gloom.”

Mr. Gissing added that the government isn’t dismissing concerns about climate change, but he said Nunavut wants to base bear-management practices on current information “and not predictions about what might happen.”…

In 2004, Environment Canada researchers concluded that the numbers in the region had dropped by 22 per cent since 1984, to 935. They also estimated that by 2011, the population would decrease to about 610. That sparked worldwide concern about the future of the bears and prompted the Canadian and American governments to introduce legislation to protect them. ….

But many Inuit communities said the researchers were wrong. They said the bear population was increasing and they cited reports from hunters who kept seeing more bears. …… Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been.”

GATEWAY PUNDIT chimes in on the polar Bear “deaths” versus the facts — a while back (2011):

Then the truth started leaking out. After democrats passed their junk science “pile of sh*t” Cap and Trade legislation in June 2009 a report was released, and suppressed, that showed that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, were much higher than they were 30 years ago. In fact, it’s about time for a cull.

Polar bear numbers in Canada have increased in 11 of 13 regions in recent years. Polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years. There are 5 times as many polar bears today as there were 50 years ago:

[….]

Despite the fact that the bear populations are booming, the Obama administration set aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat” for polar bears recently. The action that could restrict future drilling for oil and gas development.

Now, to top it all off, we find out the scientists who first reported on drowned polar bears is under investigation and likely fabricated the story.

(read more)

Failed Eco-Nut Predictions of 2015 (A Short List)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Here’s the long list)

Temp Change ipcc

1) UN overestimated global warming by 2015

Two decades ago, the UN came up with several models that all predicted that by 2015, the Earth would have warmed by at least a degree Fahrenheit. Yet in the last two decades, there has instead been virtually no warming according to satellite temperature measurements….

RPT’s addition: NASA has said that the “Abyss” has not gotten warmer since 2005, and do not know why [if taking into account global warming realities] why the earth has stalled in temperature… even getting slightly colder globally since 2005 (see chart of CO2 output and temperature, below). It is called a “mystery” by NASA.

[…..]

2) All Rainforest Species Will Be Extinct

Dr. Paul Ehrlich, the President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, got famous for his 1968 book “the Population Bomb” which predicted that increasing human populations would spell doom.

One part of that doom, he warned in his 1981 book “Extinction,” was that all rainforest species would likely soon go extinct due to environmental destruction.

“Half of the populations and species in tropical moist forests would be extinct early in the next century [the 2000s] and none would be left by 2025,” he warns on page 291. He added that that his model indicated that, on the upper bound, complete extinction would occur as soon as 2010….

RPT’s addition: The New York Times makes point that “…for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.” This doesn’t sound too alarmist to me. Speaking of alarmists, William Shatner, Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame, mentioned in a National Geographic video that, “rainforests [are] being cleared at the rate of 20 football fields per minute.”  If this were truly the case, the forests would have been completely wiped out years ago.  In fact, the co-founder and long-time director of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, said:

“All these save-the-forests arguments are based on bad science….  They are quite simply wrong… [Phillip Stott and I] found that the Amazon rainforests is more than 90% intact. We flew over it and met all the environmental authorities. We studied satellite pictures of the entire area.”

Phillip Stott, who has 30 years of studying tropical forests under his belt as well as being professor of biogeography at London University mentioned that, “there are now still – despite what humans have done – more rainforests today than there were 12,000 years ago.”

3) Oil will run out by 2015

A Pennsylvania state government “Student and Teacher Guide” reads: “Some estimates of the oil reserves suggest that by the year 2015 we will have used all of our accessible oil supply.”

Yet the Earth still has oil: at least 1.6 trillion gallons of proven reserves, according to the Energy Information Administration, a US government agency. In fact, proven reserves have more than doubled over the last couple decades, as technological innovation made more oil accessible….

RPT’s addition: Yes, the U.S. has hit an all-time high in production:

Oil Reserves

More than that though, “According to the Institute for Energy Research’s calculations, the U.S. actually sits on 1.442 trillion barrels of recoverable deposits. That’s over 60 times the amount we usually hear about. Merline writes that this larger number would be enough to meet all U.S. oil needs for about the next 200 years” (Business Insider).

Let me repeat that, 200-years of oil!

4) Arctic sea ice will disappear by 2015.

“Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge… believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015,” (Yale Environment 360 reported in 2012). Yet government data shows that arctic sea ice has increased since then….

RPT’s addition: Here I will post information from a previous post about Polar Bear population levels, in which I point the following out:

Recent Population Increase Partly Due To Lots of Sea-Ice

Canada (CBC News via the Canadian Coast Guard, 3/2014) [ARCTIC Sea Ice] The Canadian Coast Guard is pleading with merchant ships to plan their voyages well in advance this year as the organization’s icebreaker fleet confronts some of the worst ice conditions on the Atlantic Ocean in decades.

“Plan your voyage and we’ll all get through this,” said Mike Voight, the Atlantic region’s director of programs. “We’ve got a pretty bad or challenging ice year.”

The Canadian Ice Service, an arm of Environment Canada, said there is 10 per cent more ice this year compared to the 30-year average.

“We probably haven’t seen a winter this bad as far as ice for the past 25 years,” said Voight, referring to both the amount and thickness of the ice….

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Abstract (12/2014) [ARCTIC sea ice] Despite a well-documented ~40% decline in summer Arctic sea ice extent since the late 1970’s, it has been difficult to estimate trends in sea ice volume because thickness observations have been spatially incomplete and temporally sporadic. While numerical models suggest that the decline in extent has been accompanied by a reduction in volume, there is considerable disagreement over the rate at which this has occurred. We present the first complete assessment of trends in northern hemisphere sea ice thickness and volume using 4 years of measurements from CryoSat-2. Between autumn 2010 and spring 2013, there was a 14% and 5% reduction in autumn and spring Arctic sea ice volume, respectively, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, since then there has been a marked 41% and 9% recovery in autumn and spring sea ice volume, respectively, more than offsetting losses of the previous three years. The recovery was driven by the retention of thick ice around north Greenland and Canada during summer 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 6% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred – climatic conditions more typical of the early 1990’s. Such a sharp increase in volume after just one cool summer indicates that the Arctic sea ice pack may be more resilient than has been previously considered.

Talking About Weather (7/2014) [ANTARCTIC sea ice] Antarctic sea ice has hit its second all-time record maximum this week. The new record is 2.112 million square kilometers above normal. Until the weekend just past, the previous record had been 1.840 million square kilometers above normal, a mark hit on December 20, 2007, as I reported here, and also covered in my book.

Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, responded to e-mail questions and also spoke by telephone about the new record sea ice growth in the Southern Hemisphere, indicating that, somewhat counter-intuitively, the sea ice growth was specifically due to global warming.

Sea Ice 2014

Let us compare this to Al Gore saying the northern ice-caps will be gone

 NewsBusters makes the point another way, in that the “media” is derelict in their duty:

The same year that former Vice President Al Gore predicted that the Arctic sea ice could be completely gone, Arctic ice reached its highest level in two years, according to a report by the Danish Meteorological Institute. 

According to that report, which was cited by the Daily Mail (UK) on Aug. 30, “[t]he Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in a row.” The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) confirmed this trend, but didn’t go into as much detail as the Danish Meteorological Institute.

But an examination of ABC, CBS and NBC news programs since the Daily Mail story was published found that all three networks ignored news that Arctic sea ice was at a two-year high….

Remember, you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink.

…read it all at Fox News.

Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Records ~ Climate Cycles

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via WUWT:

The sea ice surrounding Antarctica, which, as I reported in my book, has been steadily increasing throughout the period of satellite measurement that began in 1979, has hit a new all-time record high for areal coverage.

The new record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice, the ice encircling the southernmost continent, is 2.074 million square kilometers and was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s The Cryosphere Today early Sunday morning. …

The Collapsing of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Man Caused? (Geothermal)

Published by Papa Giorgio

  • Volcanic activity beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is accelerating collapse of the Thwaites Glacier, a new study finds.

Here us the UPDATE via What’s Up With That! (Remember, Thwaites is close to a volcano [see below in original post])

Remember the wailing from Suzanne Goldenberg over the “collapse” of the Thwaites glacier blaming man-made CO2 effects and the smackdown given to the claim on WUWT?

Well, never mind. From the University of Texas at Austin and the “you can stop your wailing now” department, comes this really, really, inconvenient truth.

Researchers find major West Antarctic glacier melting from geothermal sources

AUSTIN, Texas — Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it’s being melted from below by geothermal heat, researchers at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin (UTIG) report in the current edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings significantly change the understanding of conditions beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet where accurate information has previously been unobtainable.

The Thwaites Glacier has been the focus of considerable attention in recent weeks as other groups of researchers found the glacier is on the way to collapse, but more data and computer modeling are needed to determine when the collapse will begin in earnest and at what rate the sea level will increase as it proceeds. The new observations by UTIG will greatly inform these ice sheet modeling efforts.

Using radar techniques to map how water flows under ice sheets, UTIG researchers were able to estimate ice melting rates and thus identify significant sources of geothermal heat under Thwaites Glacier. They found these sources are distributed over a wider area and are much hotter than previously assumed.

The geothermal heat contributed significantly to melting of the underside of the glacier, and it might be a key factor in allowing the ice sheet to slide, affecting the ice sheet’s stability and its contribution to future sea level rise.

The cause of the variable distribution of heat beneath the glacier is thought to be the movement of magma and associated volcanic activity arising from the rifting of the Earth’s crust beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet….

…read more…

Policy Mic had this “scary” picture above, and blamed essentially man-caused global warming, rather than natural causes. Carbon as the driver has been disproved by the evidence (here and here for instance). Likewise, the above was expected — for quite some time — as Hockey Schtick explains:

The “collapse” of the “unstable” West Antarctic Ice Sheet in the headlines this week is actually very old news about a natural process that began at least 1-2 centuries ago, long before man could have had any possible contribution. Studies indicate collapse and complete disappearance of the West Antarctic ice sheet is typical of interglacials. Open seaways were present across West Antarctica at various periods even during the past one or more interglacials. There is, however, no evidence linking this phenomenon to man-made CO2, nor any evidence man can do anything to stop this natural process.

Because “Antarctica is so harsh and remote…scientists only began true investigation of its ice sheet in the 1950s. It didn’t take long for the verdict on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to come in. “Unstable,” wrote Ohio State University glaciologist John Mercer in 1968. It was identified then and remains today the single largest threat of rapid sea level rise.”

[….]

The new finding that the eventual loss of a major section of West Antarctica’s ice sheet “appears unstoppable” was not completely unexpected by scientists who study this area. The study, led by glaciologist Eric Rignot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Irvine, follows decades of research and theory suggesting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is inherently vulnerable to change.

Antarctica is so harsh and remote that scientists only began true investigation of its ice sheet in the 1950s. It didn’t take long for the verdict on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to come in. “Unstable,” wrote Ohio State University glaciologist John Mercer in 1968. It was identified then and remains today the single largest threat of rapid sea level rise.

Why is West Antarctica’s ice sheet considered “unstable”?

The defining characteristic of West Antarctica is that the majority of the ice sheet is “grounded” on a bed that lies below sea level.

In his 1968 paper, Mercer called the West Antarctic Ice Sheet a “uniquely vulnerable and unstable body of ice.” Mercer based his statement on geologic evidence that West Antarctica’s ice had changed considerably many, many millennia ago at times when the ice sheets of East Antarctica and Greenland had not

In 1973, University of Maine researcher Terry Hughes asked the question that scientists continue to investigate today. The title of his paper: “Is The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Disintegrating?” In 1981, Hughes published a closer look at the Amundsen Sea region specifically. He called it “the weak underbelly of the West Antarctic ice sheet.”

Here’s the cause for concern: When the ice sheet is attached to a bed below sea level, ocean currents can deliver warm water to glacier grounding lines, the location where the ice attaches to the bed.

Scientists recognized that this is the first step in a potential chain reaction. Ocean heat eats away at the ice, the grounding line retreats inland and ice shelves lose mass. When ice shelves lose mass, they lose the ability to hold back inland glaciers from their march to the sea, meaning those glaciers can accelerate and thin as a result of the acceleration. This thinning is only conducive to more grounding line retreat, more acceleration and more thinning. In this equation, more ice flows to sea every year and sea level rises.

But that’s not all.

Beginning with research flights in the 1960s that made radar measurements over West Antarctica, scientists began to understand that, inland of the ice sheet’s edge, the bed slopes downward, precipitously, in some cases.

This downward, inland slope was theorized decades ago, but has been confirmed and mapped in detail in recent years by airborne campaigns such as NASA’s Operation IceBridge. In some spots the bed lies more than a mile and a half below sea level. The shape of this slope means that when grounding lines start to retreat, ocean water can infiltrate between the ice and the bed and cause the ice sheet to float off its grounding line.

…read more…

This is UPDATED info via HotAir, and I merely wish to point out that if volcanism starts in the Antarctic, I will Three Stooges slap me some greenie!

…This is not new stuff either. This story has been popping up since 2008. I wrote about it here and here. As noted in 2008, a fairly simple discovery, not mentioned in any of these articles, proffered an explanation of why the ocean water was warming and the ice shelf in question then was melting.

“Scientists have just now discovered an active volcano under the Antarctic ice that “creates melt-water that lubricates the base of the ice sheet and increases the flow towards the sea”. That could include the Wilkins Ice Sheet as well (the article cited talks about the Larson A and B sheets.

But, say the alarmists, we’re not talking about Wilkins or the Larson sheets. We’re talking about the Thwaites glacier.

The study honed in on the Thwaites glacier – a broad glacier that is part of the Amundsen Sea. Scientists have known for years that the Thwaites glacier is the soft underbelly of the Antarctic ice sheet, and first found that it was unstable decades ago.

The University of Washington researchers said that the fast-moving Thwaites glacier could be lost in a matter of centuries. The loss of that glacier alone would raise global sea level by nearly 2ft.

Thwaites also acts as a dam that holds back the rest of the ice sheet. Once Thwaites goes, researchers said, the remaining ice in the sheet could cause another 10 to 13ft (3-4m) of global sea-level rise.

Ok. Well, let’s look at a couple of pictures then. The first is from the 2008 post I did on the volcano:

The second picture, from the Guardian article, shows the area of the study.  The red dot is the glacier in question:

Does anyone notice anything interesting?  Yes, that’s right, the glacier in question, is in the vicinity of the volcano in question.  And I don’t think anyone would argue that a undersea volcano can’t heat up the sea in the vicinity to a little higher temperature than it would be normally.  Has it had an effect?  Who knows … it doesn’t appear to have been mentioned at all in the study.  But, if you go to the Guardian article you’ll see an embedded 17 second video that attempts to explain the effect of the warmer water on the glacier.  It shows less dense (and therefore lighter) warm water somehow flowing under much denser and therefore heavier cold water to destabilize the glacier.  The only reasonable explanation for such a flow would be if the heat source were somewhere near the bottom of the ocean, no?  Otherwise its hard to explain how that warm water got below the cold water and stayed there.

But if you question things like this, you’re an ignorant nincompoop.  A “denier”…

…read it all…

`LAND [Reality] HO!`

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some commentary by GayPatriot:

…The left claims that they refuse to debate Climate Change because they have confidence in the infallibility of science; but refusal to debate opponents… and obsessive ridiculing of opponents … is not a sign of confidence, it is a sign of fear. The left has been invested in Global Warming for over two decades, and the histrionic predictions …such as the one that the polar ice caps would be completely gone by 2012 … haven’t come true.

The left can never let go of the Global Warming myth no matter how much the real world data refutes it. There’s still a lot of grant money and carbon credit flim-flam money to be made. But even worse that that, admitting that the bitter-clinger Jesus-people were right all along would just be too humiliating for the Cult of Smart People.

Tax-Payer Funded `Love-Boat` Tour of the Ravages of Global Warming on Sea-Ice Back-Fires (Caroling in the Antarctic)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Who was on board (Breitbart)?

According to the Guardian, the passengers consist of about 25 professors and graduate students, 20 tourists and 22 Russian crew members.

You can’t make this stuff up! Some environmentalists were taking a “Love Boat” type tour of the effects of global warming melting the ice in the Antarctic. PWNED!

NewsBusters points out the missing story bi-lines from the legacy media in the purpose of this mostly tax-payer funded boondoggle:

So what was the exact mission of these scientists? AP is rather vague about this reporting only:

The scientific team on board the research ship — which left New Zealand on Nov. 28 — had been recreating Australian explorer Douglas Mawson’s century-old voyage to Antarctica when it became trapped. They plan to continue their expedition after they are freed, expedition leader Chris Turney said.

Um, there is a bit more to the expedition than merely following in the footsteps of a century-old voyage. But what that mission really is, AP won’t say. If AP is vague about the mission’s purpose, Reuters provides even less information.

Since the MSM isn’t forthcoming as to the real purpose of those scientists traveling to Antarctica, we turn to Watts Up With That for more insight:

The expedition is being led by Chris Turney, “climate scientist”, who has “set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.” The purpose of the expedition is “to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”

It seems they found out what the “environmental changes taking place in the south.” are.

Finally, National Geographic bluntly states the mission purpose:

…The current crop of explorers are hoping to document some of the same data and compare them to Mawson’s numbers, “using the twist of modern technology,” Turney told National Geographic earlier this month.

As may be expected, global warming might play a role in this, he suggests, particularly with respect to melted ice in the East Antarctic.

Ah, so now we see why the MSM reluctance to flat out state why the scientists are in the Antarctic. Anything to avoid an inconvenient (but accurate) headline like this:

GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTISTS TRAPPED IN ANTARCTIC ICE

See Also: 96 Percent of Network Stories Censor Why Ship Is There

Antarctic ice trapped a ship full of scientists on a climate change expedition. Yet, 96 percent of network news reports about the stranded researchers ignored climate change entirely. The ship has been stuck since Christmas morning.

The broadcast networks mostly ignored the reason the Russian ship, Akademic Shokalskiy, was on its way to Antarctica. Twenty-five out of 26 stories (96 percent) on the network morning and evening news shows since Dec. 25 failed to mention climate change had anything to do with the expedition.

…read more…

All `Data Points` Prove Global Warming

  • “So record cold is now evidence of man-made global warming? What evidence would disprove climate change? It seems like no matter the weather, everything that happens proves it.” ~ Marc Morano

Any theory that cannot be disproved is a false theory:

“The underlying problem is that a key Darwinian term is not defined. Darwinism supposedly explains how organisms become more ‘fit,’ or better adapted to their environment. But fitness is not and cannot be defined except in terms of existence. If an animal exists, it is ‘fit’ (otherwise it wouldn’t exist). It is not possible to specify all the useful parts of that animal in order to give an exhaustive causal account of fitness. [I will add here that there is no way to quantify those unknowable animal parts in regards to the many aspects that nature could or would impose on all those parts.] If an organism possesses features that appears on the surface to be an inconvenient – such as the peacock’s tail or the top-heavy antlers of a stag – the existence of stags and peacocks proves that these animals are in fact fit.

So the Darwinian theory is not falsifiable by any observation. It ‘explains’ everything, and therefore nothing. It barely qualifies as a scientific theory for that reason….

The truth is that Darwinism is so shapeless that it can be enlisted is support of any cause whatsoever…. Darwinism has over the years been championed by eugenicists, social Darwinists, racialists, free-market economists, liberals galore, Wilsonian progressives, and National Socialists, to give only a partial list. Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, Communists and libertarians, and almost anyone in between, have at times found Darwinism to their liking.”

The above is from an article by Tom Bethell in The American Spectator (magazine), July/August 2007, pp. 44-46.

(RPT post on Falsifiability and Conspiracy Theories)

Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded on Earth!

Published by Papa Giorgio

First, let’s compare two headlines from Climate Depot that appeared in British newspapers within the past decade:

Killer winter storms for next THIRTY years;

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.

One should read my post on the “no snow” as well. Do you get the sense that these guys are full of crap?

Well, here is the story on the coldest temp yet recorded on earth, via The Big Story:

Feeling chilly? Here’s cold comfort: You could be in East Antarctica which new data says set a record for “soul-crushing” cold.

Try 135.8 degrees Fahrenheit below zero; that’s 93.2 degrees below zero Celsius, which sounds only slightly toastier. Better yet, don’t try it. That’s so cold scientists say it hurts to breathe.

A new look at NASA satellite data revealed that Earth set a new record for coldest temperature recorded. It happened in August 2010 when it hit -135.8 degrees. Then on July 31 of this year, it came close again: -135.3 degrees.

The old record had been -128.6 degrees, which is -89.2 degrees Celsius.

Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the new record is “50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota.”

“It’s more like you’d see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles,” Scambos said, from the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco Monday, where he announced the data. “I’m confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth.”

…read more…