Say Anything Blog

On the other poll, though, the ice along the “northwest passage” is at an all-time low.  According to this article, anyway.  But there’s probably an explanation for that outside of anthropomorphic global warming.

I think I read somewhere once that the earth has a “wobble” to it that may be causing some of this?

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob, the problem with the arctic ice loss meme is that it started around 1850—the point where we left the Little Ice Age.  This is a problem because human generated global warming was only supposed to have been an issue since the late 1970s.

Have you ever noticed that they show you “before” and “after” pictures of glaciers, where the “before” is circa 1900, not 1970.  The hidden story for many of those glaciers is most of that ice lost had already occurred by 1970.  They also play little games like comparing the ice loss from 1980-current to 1960-1980.

Of course we were in a relative cooling period from 1960-1980, so it’s hardly surprising that the ice loss is accelerating relative to then.

Anyway, if you think about it in terms of leaving a period where ice was actually increasing, it’s a) not unexpected to have ice loss once we leave that period, and b) how do we know that the Northwest Passage wasn’t open before the start of the Little Ice Age? 

It’s likely we’re just returning that state, somewhat accelerated by human activity, but where it would go naturally in any case.