posted December 07, 2014 10:21 AM            

It's a fact climate change deniers are fond of repeating. If the planet is warming, shouldn't sea ice be melting away rather than growing?

It's true that the phenomenon is a confusing one — but it's no proof that climate change isn't happening. In fact, scientists believe that climate change is actually responsible for the strange events down in the Antarctic. Walt Meier, a scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, explains how this is possible in a new video from Science@NASA.

The first thing to note is that sea ice and land ice are two completely different things. Sea ice is simply frozen ocean water, which forms a layer of ice on top of the sea. Land ice originates on land, forming from compacted snow to form glaciers and ice sheets. Land ice melting into the oceans is what causes sea levels to rise.

While sea ice has been steadily growing in the Antarctic, land ice has actually been shrinking. In fact, a new NASA report shows that the melting rate of land ice in West Antarctica, the fastest-melting region on the continent, has tripled during the last 10 years. Researchers found that between 1992 and 2013, the region lost an average of 83 gigatons of ice every year.

Meier believes all this melting land ice might actually be causing the increase in sea ice. As glaciers melt, they pour cold freshwater into the ocean. Freshwater is easier to freeze than salty seawater, so the influx from the melting glaciers could be adding to Antarctica's sea ice.

Snowfall could also be a factor. As snow falls onto the existing sea ice, Meier explains, it weighs the ice down and causes it to sink just beneath the water's surface. Cold ocean water then seeps up and mixes with the falling snow, creating a slushy mixture that eventually freezes, thickening and expanding the sea ice.

It's unclear how much snowfall has fluctuated over the past few decades in Antarctica, but experts believe it will increase as the climate continues to warm. Numerous climate studies, including reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have warned that climate change will lead to increases in heavy precipitation events and more frequent and intense storms.

Even wind could be part of the answer. Climate change is altering weather patterns all over the globe, causing air flow to shift around the planet and storms to become more frequent and intense. This phenomenon is evident is Antarctica, which is becoming increasingly windy.

Meier says these winds can carry cold air from the icy continent out over the ocean, where they aid in the freezing process out in the open ocean.

Differing conditions and weather patterns around the world can lead to different outcomes — an impact of changing climate that we are literally seeing everywhere around us, from droughts in California to extreme November snow storms in Buffalo, NY.

It's not so strange that different part of the world would react differently to global warming. And we have very strong evidence that sea ice is quickly disappearing in the Arctic, wreaking havoc on animals such as seals and polar bears who need it for their hunting and breeding grounds.

posted December 07, 2014 10:47 AM            

Everything is caused by Man Made Global Warming.

Too hot, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Too cold, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Just right, it's Man Made Global Warming.

No ice, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Too much ice, It's Man Made Global Warming.

Normal amount of ice, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Raining, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Drought, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Normal rainfall, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Windy, it's Man Made Global Warming.

Calm, it's Man Made Global Warming.

posted December 09, 2014 08:07 AM            

It used to strike me as impossible for global warming to cause cold weather. Then I realized that I could chill a soft drink in the oven if there were no room left in the refrigerator to bake a cake.

Up until then I did not know that the same cause can have opposite effects. In my unenlightened state, it never occurred to me that carbon dioxide could cause both excessive heat and excessive cold, both drought and flood.

I should have known. After all, we calm hyperactive children with stimulants and cure addiction to drugs with addicting drugs. When the government goes too far in debt, it borrows more money. We achieve diversity through uniformity. We overcome racism with racism. When children don't learn, we send them to schools that don't teach. We question authority by believing the authorities.

We tell the truth with lies and lie with the truth. Lying about Ferguson is merely the way to advance the larger truth that our cops are racist. Telling the truth about Ferguson impedes our understanding.

We exercise our reproductive freedom with birth control pills and abortions. The pills, you see, both prevent a woman from giving birth and make her free to reproduce, as if no one had a baby before the invention of the Pill. An abortion both kills a baby and gives life.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton quieted raging mobs in Pakistan by telling them they had every right to be angry, and now he tells criminals that the police are unfair to them. He claims to seek trust between minorities and the police by saying the police are racists. Rioters speak truth to power by intimidating powerless witnesses into lying. They can afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted by setting fire to neighborhoods where no one is comfortable and all are afflicted.

Barack tells looters and arsonists that he too is angry. Michelle tells single mothers on welfare that she too has it rough. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Obama thinks that siding with our enemies against our friends will leave us with no enemies and lots of friends. Hillary Clinton thought that the way to protect Benghazi was to send security away and hire people who hate us. Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

Obama reduced the number of people looking for work by having them give up on finding jobs. He gives out massive quantities of free food that his wife tells people not to eat. College students have learned one thing, at least: that they can protect themselves from disease and prevent unwanted pregnancies by having sex with people they hardly know using condoms. We pride ourselves on the knowledge we think we gain through entertainment and demand that our schools be entertaining. We teach all of our children to be leaders.

Madonna praised Obama for being a Muslim and for championing gay rights. She takes the name of a woman adored for her perpetual virginity and sleeps with Dennis Rodman. Bill Clinton advised high school students to wait until they are married. Al Gore burns as much fuel as all of us combined and blames us for filling the air with carbon dioxide. Barack Obama is for the little guy and once took Air Force One to New York City for a date with his wife. Bill Clinton held up air traffic in Los Angeles so that he could get a haircut. Or so they said. He tried to get high on marijuana without inhaling.

Here in Austin the government decided that the freeway lanes were too wide and that traffic congestion could be reduced by driving a lot of buses around empty. The City Council thinks it can somehow get people onto buses that won't come to them where they are or take them where they want to go. Democrats say that Sarah Palin lied about death panels, and President Obama said that an old woman should take pain pills instead of having an operation. He reduces illness by killing the young and letting the old die. He has cut insurance prices by doubling them. He has reduced inequality by making us less equal. He humanizes himself by getting a dog.

So global warming causing cold weather is no more irrational than anything else the establishment says.

Obama and the Democrats won. He won in 2012 by getting more votes than Romney did, and the Democrats won in 2014 with the non-votes of the people who did not show up at the polls.

I lost both times, so I'll write with an eraser and erase with a pencil. I'll make my truck go faster by hitting the brakes and slow it down by flooring the accelerator.

I must admit, however, that I have yet to figure how to know when the brakes will brake and when they'll accelerate. If I could understand that, perhaps I could understand when and under what circumstances carbon dioxide heats the air and when it cools it. Then I wouldn't risk causing a drought with a rain dance. Meanwhile, I had better catch one of those empty buses. If enough people stop caring where we are headed, perhaps they won't be empty anymore.

Not so long ago, most people believed that God controlled the weather. Now the scientific establishment believes, or at least pretends to believe, that warm weather, cold weather, floods, and droughts are caused by carbon dioxide released into the air by the burning of fossil fuels, that, in other words, human beings control the weather. They think that we can prevent the climate from changing on a planet that has had billions of years of changing climates. The scientific establishment has put humanity on the throne once nigh universally said to belong to God.

Of course, these scientists believe that hot, cold, wet, and dry are great evils, more deadly than nuclear warfare and nerve gas attacks according to the Secretary of State, who for some bizarre reason is in charge of pipeline safety, and they believe that enemies of science deserve the blame for these evils, implying thereby that the reverence once reserved for God belongs to Tea Partiers, Pro-Lifers, Fundamentalists, Big Oil, Texans, Red Staters, the One Percent, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh.

So they are confused, but we could hardly expect otherwise from people who think that the same thing causes opposite effects. They use Ritalin to calm rambunctious boys. They cure indebtedness with debt and freely reproduce with abortions. Health care means for them killing the aged and infirm.

Churches have been so inclusive that there is hardly anyone left.