sell! sell! sell!

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The other stuff completely different topics ..

As for one singular model not panning out doesn't prove anything other than most models typically fail in reality..

The overall trends are fairly clear though .. Contrarians to global warming pick and choose data points to prove their case..

 

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Here's the trend on arctic ice these things are never a straight line with lots of noise along the way..

 

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[h=1]Watch This U.S. Submarine Bust Through the Arctic Ice[/h]The U.S. military is in the midst of a five-week exercise to test how well it can operate north of the Arctic Circle. ICEX 2016 involves the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army working together to ensure the U.S. can project power into an increasingly navigable and important region.
Traditionally, the Arctic has been a low military priority for everybody. The bitter cold makes it inhospitable. The lack of dry land makes stationing forces there difficult. Outposts are generally limited to arctic research, early warning radar, and meteorological stations.
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Global warming is changing that. Rising temperatures are contributing to a decline in Arctic sea ice and a rise in human activity way up north. Less ice means previously unreachable arctic resources can now be accessed and a new Arctic shipping route might be possible—two new things for human beings to fight over.
The easiest way to operate in the Arctic is to fly over it or sail under it. ICEX 2016 involved two submarines—USS Hartfordfrom the Atlantic Fleet and USS Hamptonfrom the Pacific Fleet—conducting multiple trips under the ice, surfacing at the North Pole, and conducting training specific to arctic conditions.
More From Popular Mechanics


A key part of the exercise was establishing a temporary ice camp—Camp Sargo—north of the Arctic Circle. Sargo was then reinforced with an airdrop from a C-17 Globemaster III transport. Flying from Alaska, the C-17 airdropped a dozen Air Force and National Guard soldiers plus a 9,500-pound "arctic sustainment package." U.S. Army Air National Guard Blackhawk helicopters flew north to land at the camp. USS Hartford also surfaced at Camp Sargo, dramatically breaking through the ice sheet within view of the camp:
The United States isn't the only country to show new interest in the arctic region. Russia, which encompasses nearly half of the region, is building upmilitary forces there. China is also trying to get in the game, but has been hobbled by the fact that it doesn't actually have any territory in the region.
Despite a general warming trend, conditions north of the Arctic Circle are still numbingly cold: Barrow, Alaska—350 miles north of the Circle but still 1,200 miles below the North Poke—is a brisk -9 degrees Fahrenheit right now, with winds at 16 miles an hour. As the Arctic ice sheet continues to disappear expect more military exercises designed to ensure the U.S. and its allies access to the new frontier—or deny it to someone else.

 

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[h=1]Training for a cruise ship catastrophe in the Artic | Fusion[/h]The story was originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On 13 April, coast guard officials from the US and Canada will train for a cruise ship catastrophe: a mass rescue from a luxury liner on its maiden voyage through the remote and deathly cold waters between the Northwest Passage and the Bering Strait.
The prospect of just such a disaster occurring amid the uncharted waters and capricious weather of the Arctic is becoming all too real.
The loss of Arctic sea ice cover, due to climate change, has spurred a sharp rise in shipping traffic – as well as coast guard rescue missions – and increased the risks of oil spills, shipping accidents, and pollution, much to the apprehension of native communities who make their living on the ice.
It’s into these turbulent waters that the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity will set sail next August, departing from Seward, Alaska, and transiting the Bering Strait and Northwest Passage, before docking in New York City 32 days later.
The scale of the Crystal – 1,700 passengers and crew – and the potential for higher-volume traffic in the Arctic has commanded the attention of the coast guard, government officials and local communities, all trying to navigate an Arctic without year-round ice.
Most cruise ships that get here have passenger manifests of 100, maybe 150. This is a very different ship.
“If something were to go wrong it would be very, very bad,” said Richard Beneville, the mayor of the coastal town of Nome, which the Crystal is due to visit. “Most cruise ships that get here have passenger manifests of 100, maybe 150. This is a very different ship.”
A century after explorer Roald Amundsen transited the sea route connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, officials and local communities are struggling to keep pace with the changes in the Arctic set in motion by the disappearing sea ice.
Scientists expect the Arctic will be almost entirely ice free in the summer within 25 years – exposing profitable new year-round shipping routes.
“The United States should be getting prepared by building infrastructure in the north,” Robert Papp, a former coast guard admiral and the State Department’s special envoy to the Arctic, said.
“Yes, we are concerned about this cruise ship going through but we have been concerned for a number of years because during the summer time Shell has been going up there to drill, other companies have been exploring, there has been an increase even in recreational sailors or adventure sailors going up there.”
Related
Trial starts for errant captain of Costa Concordia


The Crystal is by far the biggest and most luxuriously appointed vessel to sail through the Northwest Passage since the crossing became accessible to ships without an icebreaker in 2007. Just 17 ships crossed through the passage last year, according to the US coast guard.
Prices for the journey aboard the 14-deck luxury liner start at nearly $22,000 rising to $120,000 for a deluxe stateroom – and this year’s cruise is sold out, according to the company.
The 13 April table-top planning exercise, involving US and Canadian coast guard and government officials, will walk Crystal operators and rescue officials through the nightmarish scenario of rescuing hundreds of passengers up to 1,000 miles from the nearest coast guard base, officials said.
We all have to be very proactive in trying to game out what we do in an emergency situation.
Communications in the Arctic are extremely challenging – cellphone reception is patchy, and there are no roads. Most of the towns along the Crystal’s route are tiny. Even Nome, which has a sizable population, has just 18 hospital beds.
Related
Luxury cruise ships can now sail the Northwest Passage thanks to climate change


“We all have to be very proactive in trying to game out what we do in an emergency situation,” Lt Commander Jason Boyle, the coast guard’s prevention officer for the Alaska region, said in a telephone interview.
The Crystal will sail with an icebreaking escort vessel carrying two helicopters along its entire route, Paul Garcia, a company spokesman, wrote in an email. Ice pilots, polar bear researchers, and veterans of other Arctic expeditions will be aboard to ensure passengers’ safety and to protect the local wildlife, environment and customs, the company said.
For the coastal town of Nome, and the other ports of call on the Crystal’s route, the cruise symbolises the economic possibilities of an ice-free Arctic in the summer.
Nome, which saw just 35 dockings in the 1990s, had more than 730 last year.
“I think tourism is good for Nome,” Beneville, the town’s indefatigable mayor, said. “In tourism there is a saying: ‘if people can get there, they will go’, and that is becoming possible.” He went on: “There is a lot at stake here. We want Nome to be a strategic point in the north.”
But even before the Crystal Serenity began planning its voyage, the coast guard and local communities were raising concerns that the Arctic was not ready for the sharp rise in traffic through the Bering Strait.
The coast guard recorded 540 crossings through the narrow passage between the US and Russia last year – more than double the number in 2008.
The vessels included Korean cargo ships, Russian tankers, supply barges, oil industry vessels and smaller cruise ships – and adventurers.
Commander Mark Wilcox, the Arctic planner for the US coast guard, falls back on the phrase “tyranny of distance” to describe the epic challenges of assuring safe passage through the northern waterways for an increasing number of independent tourists.
On 4 March, two British adventurers who set out to ski across the Bering Strait had to be flown to safety from thin ice – an operation that required two coast guard helicopters, a C-130 military transport plane, and 24 highly trained personnel deployed from a base 700 miles away, according to the coast guard.
Two years ago, a scientific research ship in the Chukchi Sea was diverted to rescue adventurers. In 2010, a smaller cruise ship went aground in the Canadian Arctic, forcing the evacuation of some 300 passengers.
We are starting to see more of the adventure tourists that have a lot more interest in the Arctic.
“We are starting to see more of the adventure tourists that have a lot more interest in the Arctic,” Wilcox said. “As we see more human activity it increases our risk for potential incidents.”
In addition to emergencies, local people said they were afraid of oil spills, pollution and waste, because of the rise in shipping traffic. In 2012, hunters from St Lawrence Island reported finding heavily oiled seals and seabirds in the Bering Strait. A year earlier, government wildlife biologists began recording a mysterious illness killing off seals, as well as avian cholera.
Local communities grew concerned about the use of heavy bunker fuels, and dumping of grey water from passing vessels.
The loss of ice opening up the Arctic to year-round traffic was also upending the way of life for native Alaskan communities who have used the ice as a platform for hunting and fishing, or as transport routes. The winter ice could no longer be trusted, according to local people.
“There are five to seven people in the last five years that I know of off the top of my head who have gone through the ice on snow machines or four-wheelers while travelling,” said Anahma Shannon, who works with Kawerak, a service organisation for native Alaskans in the Bering coastal region.
In typical winters, there is about a mile of solid ice from shore, enabling walrus hunters to approach their prey on land. Hunting from small boats is much riskier. But in this year’s record high temperatures, the ice is thin and drifting away from the shore. “This year may be the first year in recent history that we haven’t had the outside ice,” Shannon said.
The season’s thin and slushy ice was also hurting fisheries. In past winters, it would be common to see people fishing for king crab on the ice off Nome, setting out traps through holes drilled into the ice. Commercial fishermen might strike out farther, riding their snowmobiles six or seven miles across the ice to Sled Island. But the thinner ice was squeezing fishermen into smaller areas and shallower waters, said Adem Boeckmann, a commercial fisherman.
“The lack of ice is making it tougher to find the crab and harvest them,” he said. He estimated the catch was only a third or a half of last year’s. “We are not making money we are just making ends meet.”
The native Alaskan communities recognise that cruise ships and tourist dollars could bring big money to places like Nome. But they were already experiencing loss of income and a way of life because of the retreat of the sea ice.
The prospect of a flood of visitors to the region was only adding to those fears of losing their livelihoods and their culture, said Austin Ahmasuk, who runs Kawerak’s marine programme.
“We can draw these very clear parallels from the past for the possibility of the destruction of our culture,” he said. “Let’s just say we suspect that maybe not the most holistic way of approaching development will occur.”

 

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The overall trends are fairly clear though .. Contrarians to global warming pick and choose data points to prove their case..

LOL that's a good one for a sceptic to read

The overall trends are fairly clear though .. indeed they are, step out of line on established policies are you are toast, once a policy has been set the penalties are severe for any contrarian view

Contrarians to global warming pick and choose data points to prove their case..

hehe. Where Man Made Global Warming God is concerned both sides are 100% guilty as charged.
Some say MMGWG exists
some disagree and say he doesn't exist

If you want to make money out of it then say that man made global warming god exists

If you want a contrarian question to ponder:
Find me a single MMGWG "scientific study" that failed to "prove" that their god exists

I have zero doubts that the planet is warming up
I have zero doubts that the arctic ice sheet is thinning, and will melt faster due to the surface area to volume ratio effect
(My scientific study is based on a 2 dollar rum and coke with an ice cube in it. At first it melted slowly, then when it became a thin sliver of ice it melted much faster)

As far as what is causing this effect?
Well after 10,000 years of increasing temperatures I strongly suspect that climate change is a completely natural phenomenon, call it a wild guess with 10,000 years of unwritten hard data.

 

[eek.]

Have a look at a medieval warm period chart.
Temperatures are a whopping 0.4 degrees hotter! We're all doomed! Doomed!!

I really hate the MMGWG "debate" because both sides are so dogmatic and Government welfare handouts of billions have seriously skewed any hope of common sense

Any policy that reduces pollution and resource depletion can't be all bad though, it's just the argument itself which bugs me

 

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Solar cycles is one the contrarians point to but that shit is shoddy at best...

The sun, the earths core and the oceans are all far greater sources of energy than anything mankind can EVER produce
Every 2-3 days the sun blasts planet earth with the energy equivalent of every fossil fuel reserve on the entire planet

IMO We are utterly insignificant as far as the bigger picture is concerned

 

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IMO We are utterly insignificant as far as the bigger picture is concerned

well regardless of the source of the warming.. And what that means for us all

It's clear than man is the sole reason for the current species extinction rate regardless of the root source (pollution, habitat destruction, climate change, man over consuming/hunting certain species for sport etc)

the fact that species are disappearing at an alarming rate outside the normal trend (other than asteroid massive volcanic activity event) is clear as day and well established..,

 

[tiznow]

Have a look at a medieval warm period chart.
Temperatures are a whopping 0.4 degrees hotter! We're all doomed! Doomed!!

I really hate the MMGWG "debate" because both sides are so dogmatic and Government welfare handouts of billions have seriously skewed any hope of common sense

Any policy that reduces pollution and resource depletion can't be all bad though, it's just the argument itself which bugs me

Also it's not about what temp we at now... Or the absolute temp itself

its where we are projected to head and the rate of change of the warming trend.. If we continue the status quo and continue to increase the co2 level (our impact on co2 levels themselves not really debatable clear correlation and spike post industrialization.. We can debate whether the waning due to that or natural cycles)

 

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This one is a curious debate for me because hopefully, for the sake of human race, planet earth etc, you are correct and I am wrong.
Sometimes it's good to be wrong. Very good indeed.

 

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We are scroomed regardless lol

Just fun to debate the various issues as we watch the slow motion car crash.. And yes things won't potentially get really bad till we are all dead and gone.. And a lot of these discussions won't have clear answer for hundreds of years.. 100s of years is uber tiny on the universal scale..

Even if west really starts to ween themselves off of fossil fuels and pollutants in general.. you really think Chinese and Indians and their ever expanding billions are going to be able to take/afford the drastic measures necessary to solve these issues??

we just can't support this many humans comfortably.. There are too many of us... Access to potable water will become a huge global issue next 100 years...

i mean it's trump vs Hillary.. mankind overall morons, doomed, and easily controlled/socially engineered by greedy sociopaths..

-----

gold miners now a double since the feb bottom gold/silver perking up today..

 

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Arrhenius of the Arrhenius equation started the debate back in 1896 and still going to this day

good read if you have some time to kill..

http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

 

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Also besides atmospheric co2 remember u have the issue of acidification of the ocean due to increasing co2 levels.. And all the species contained within don't have time to adapt to the drastic changes.. Add in pollution.. Overfishing/unsustainable practices.. And it's clear our food source from the ocean is in great jeopardy if we maintain the status quo

Projected There will be more plastic than fish in ocean by 2050 if we maintain status quo..

http://www.theguardian.com/business...fish-in-the-sea-by-2050-warns-ellen-macarthur

 

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[h=1]Great Barrier Reef: the scale of bleaching has the most sober scientists worried[/h]I pulled on my mask and dropped off the back of the boat into the warm water above Nursery Bommie, a dive site at Agincourt Reef more than 70km offshore from Port Douglas, in far-north Queensland, Australia. It is widely regarded as one of the most spectacular tourist reefs in the area.
As soon as I could start to make out the immense shadow of the bommie (an outcrop of coral reef) looming before me I could see that all around its flanks and on the summit, covered in just a metre of water in some places, were blemishes of white.
The closer I got, and the more I looked, it was clear there were white patches everywhere. The bleached colonies ranged from tiny plates, shaped like an upturned hand, to areas the size of a table top. Even more striking than the snow white corals was that all around them were other corals coloured in gaudy fluorescent hues that I had never before seen on such a scale. It was as if a masterpiece of nature had been repainted with a colour scheme more befitting a pound shop.
What I was seeing beneath me was evidence of an environmental disaster that has been unfolding over the past few months – the largest mass coral bleaching event ever recorded in this region. This bleaching is the result of a huge El Niño that has driven warm water into the western Pacific Ocean, smothering coral with temperatures beyond their tolerance.
I have dived hundreds of times, with different teams of scientists, along the reef. I have seen the aftermath of other mass coral bleaching episodes such as the most recent major event in 2002.

Bleached corals at Agincourt Reef. Photograph: James WoodfordIn my past experiences of bleached corals, the effect is patchy and, while one area is devastated, another will be mysteriously untouched. Yet the scale of this bleaching event has even the most sober and senior coral reef scientists worried. If the rhetoric from marine biologists is to be believed, then the Great Barrier Reef is now in the grip of a “bommie apocalypse”.
As I continued to dive the Nursery Bommie, the fluorescent pinks, blues, purples and greens became more abundant. While these colours might look striking, they signify that the symbiotic relationship between corals and their zooxanthellae, the photosynthetic algae, has broken down.
The fluorescent colours are always there but in healthy coral colonies the colours of the algae overwhelm those of the host coral, giving them their more typical reddish and brown hue. It is true that not all corals fluoresce, but if they have to survive for too long without the algae then bleaching becomes a death sentence.
Graphic: coral bleachingPut simply, the majority of the corals on this bommie – bleached or fluorescent – were clearly dead or dying. And it was not only the hard corals. All around were soft corals, still swaying like spaghetti in the ebb and flow of the ocean, that were white and ghostly. Most striking was that the bleaching was not just near the surface, where the water is warmest, but at depths of tens of metres where huge colonies of coral were white as well.
I swam towards a wall of reef off the stern of the boat. As I approached I saw that the seafloor was covered in fragile staghorn corals. Such a patch would normally have been the highlight of any dive to this area but now, bleached white, it was merely more evidence that a catastrophe was under way. Dismayed, I swam back to the boat.
On board was an eclectic collection of reef stakeholders including Imogen Zethoven, the director of the Great Barrier Reef campaign for the Australian Marine Conservation Society, who had also made the dive.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I had expected some patches of bleaching surrounded by mainly healthy, colourful corals. I saw the opposite.
“For decades, scientists and conservationists have been warning that climate change is an existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef and all the world’s corals. We know what needs to be done: a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy; an end to fossil fuel subsidies; the phasing out of coal-fired power stations; and keeping coal in the ground.”
While the mass bleaching is caused directly by an El Niño, which pushes warm water to the east Australian coastline, many scientists believe climate change is making the El Niño worse and more frequent, and this is coupled with a general rise in sea temperatures caused by global warming.
Also on board the dive boat was the chief executive of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, Daniel Gschwind. The reaction of his organisation to the current bleaching requires a balancing act – on one hand, highlighting the need to protect the enormous value of the reef to the Australian economy, worth a conservative AU$6bn (about £3.25bn) a year, while on the other, making sure that tourists are not scared off by alarming news. “The Great Barrier Reef is Australia’s most important tourism asset,” he said.
We dived at a second site at Agincourt Reef that day, at Castle Rock. Again, the underwater seascape was devastated by bleaching, and the scale of the devastation was beginning to sink in.
Scientists report that the same scenes are being replicated along a 1,000km section of the reef, more than a third of its total expanse. Of 500 reefs between Cairns and Papua New Guinea surveyed during this current episode, 95% have experienced significant coral bleaching – only four reefs showed no impact.
Prof David Booth, head of the Australian Coral Reef Society, the world’s oldest coral reef society, and representing some of the nation’s most respected marine biologists, said he had never seen scientists so worried.
“The visual is shocking but so is the disconnect between the severity of the bleaching and the decisions by governments to approve coalmines and coal infrastructure,” he said. “Australia is like a drug dealer for climate change – selling all this coal, but all the while knowing the harm we are doing.”
This particular bleaching event will end once the waters begin to cool. What scientists don’t know yet is how many of the corals will die, quickly being covered in a brown algae that tourists will not want to pay to see.
But there is still room for optimism. These areas can and will recover as long as the scale and frequency of bleaching does not increase. And some other areas that have been devastated in the past decade by destructive threats – such as cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish – are now recovering well. The reef is always a mosaic of damaged, recovering and stable areas that are constantly changing with environmental conditions.
Coral has evolved to deal with attacks from nature. The question is: can it survive all the cumulative assaults from humans?

 

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El Niño and La Niña events are trending towards higher frequency and intensities as things get knocked out of equilibrium (for whatever debatable reason man Or natural cycles) which allows less time for thing like Great Barrier Reef to adapt and recover..

 

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Now that we shutting down coal in us and replacing with cheap natty gas methane (much stronger greenhouse gas than co2) way up.. Cows/cattle industry (unnecessary really just humans being wasteful) produce a ton of methane too.. With methane you can at least correct it relatively quickly as it has a half life of 7 years.. Vs co2 which hangs around a lot longer..

2013 was average of 1800 ppb from various site measurements.. 420k years prior was less than half that.. Again something man made no debate there.. Can debate whether it matters/contributes to climate change
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The U.S. has been emitting a lot more methane than we thought, says EPA

In this Dec. 9, 2015 photo, crews work on stopping a gas leak at a relief well at the Aliso Canyon facility above the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles. (Dean Musgrove/Los Angeles Daily News via AP)
This story has been updated.
The Environmental Protection Agency has released a major upward revision to its estimates of total emissions of methane, a hard-hitting if short-lived greenhouse gas, in an annual inventorythat the agency submits to the United Nations. The revisions will further up the stakes in a political battle over regulations that the agency is preparingto issue that could affect operations at thousands of oil and gas wells.
“Data on oil and gas show that methane emissions from the sector are higher than previously estimated,” said the agency in a news release upon the report’s release. “The oil and gas sector is the largest emitting-sector for methane and accounts for a third of total U.S. methane emissions.”
Prior inventories, such as last year’s report, which provided data through the year 2013, had suggested that the U.S.’s highest source of methane was ruminant animals like cattle and other livestock, rather than the oil and gas industry.
The agency revised upward total methane emissions in the U.S. for the year 2013 from 636.3 million metric tons to 721.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, driven in significant part by increased estimates of emissions from oil and gas operations. And the overall methane emissions number is still higher for 2014, the most recent year in the inventory, at 730.8 million metric tons.
“What EPA essentially is doing is restating the numbers using the better data, that has been collected from the field,” said Mark Brownstein, who heads the oil and gas program at the Environmental Defense Fund, which has focused heavily on the methane issue in recent years. “What has long been thought is that emissions in the field are higher than what had been historically reported in EPA’s emissions inventory, and now, when you use that better data, it is higher.”
Some of the most substantial upward revisions involved emissions from natural gas and petroleum systems across the country — an emissions source that has increasingly been targeted by environmentalists, who say that the boom in domestic oil and gas production has driven greater methane emissions.
The EPA revised its methane numbers upward for multiple years in its inventory. According to the agency, the average increase per year due to its revisions was 12.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents for natural gas systems (now the largest category of methane emissions), and 20.7 million metric tons for petroleum systems.
Methane totals are reported in units of “carbon dioxide equivalents” so that scientists can better make an apples-to-apples comparison between different greenhouse gases. Methane is known to have a much larger warming effect than carbon dioxide, but only over a short time period, whereas carbon dioxide has a far longer time of residence in the atmosphere.
“The big picture is that, yes, EPA’s estimate of methane emissions has increased, most likely due to them receiving better data,” said Kristin Igusky, an expert on methane with the World Resources Institute. “Because methane emissions are greater than we previously thought, it’s that much more important that policies are put into place to bring emissions down in this category,” she said.
It’s important to emphasize that the latest upward revisions only account for a relatively small fraction of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which were predominantly in the form of carbon dioxide, rather than methane. Overall, emissions increased about 1 percent from the year 2013 to 2014, the last year in the newest inventory, according to the EPA.
Yet the upward methane revisions were still substantial when considered as a percentage. For instance, an analysis provided by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) found that if you compare oil and gas emissions for the year 2014 in the EPA’s latest inventory, with emissions for 2013 in the last year’s inventory, then there is a 34 percent increase — and the group said that 31 percent of that is “solely due to methodological change.”
A growing body of scientific research has suggested of late that EPA’s prior estimates of methane emissions might be too low. “An overall increase is appropriate, given what we’ve been seeing for the last few years,” said Stanford University researcher Rob Jackson, who has published a number of these studies.
The EDF’s Brownstein observed that, “Overall, these numbers refute the industry claim that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry have been declining over time.”
But a major industry group, the American Petroleum Institute, disputed the numbers Friday. “They’ve made a significant modification to the inventory estimates, and we believe that it is seriously flawed,” said Kyle Isakower, the group’s vice president of regulatory and economic policy.
Concerns about methane emissions from leaking oil and gas operations and systems has led to more and more emphasis on controlling these sources, fast, to lessen warming in the short term. President Obama and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau just jointly announced plans to seek a cut in oil and gas methane emissions by 40 or 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025.
But if the new EPA data are right, 2012 levels themselves were considerably higher than previously thought.

 

[tiznow]

Will be interesting to see how big Icelands melt is this year after the strong El Niño brought super warm winter...

----------

[h=1]Early Greenland Ice Sheet Melt Has Researchers Concerned[/h]Greenland’s massive ice sheet this week started melting freakishly early thanks to a weather system that brought unseasonably warm temperatures and rain, scientists say.
While this record early melt is mostly from natural weather on top of overall global warming, scientists say they are concerned about what it means when the melt season kicks in this summer. This however could be temporary.
On Monday and Tuesday, about 12 percent of the ice sheet surface area – 656,000 square miles or 1.7 million square kilometers – showed signs of melting ice, according to Peter Langen, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute. It smashed record for early melting by more than three weeks.


That’s normal for late May not mid-April, Langen said.
Normally, no ice should be melting in Greenland at this time of year. Before now, the earliest Greenland had more than 10 percent surface area melting was on May 5, back in 1990. Even in 2012, when 97 percent of Greenland experienced melt, it didn’t have such an early and extensive melt.
Langen said the amount of melt now is not the issue, timing is: “It’s nothing for July, it’s huge for April.”
“It’s disturbing,” Langen said. “Something like this wipes out all kinds of records, you can’t help but go this could be a sign of things we’re going to see more often in the future.”
What’s causing this weeks’ unusual melt is a weather system that is bringing warm temperatures to Greenland and funneling lots of warmer-than-normal rain up from the south, Langen said. The rain and the above freezing temperatures help melt the ice.
Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, reached 62 degrees (16.6 degrees Celsius) on Monday, smashing the April record high temperature by 6.5 degrees. Inland at Kangerlussuaq, it was 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), warmer than St. Louis and San Francisco.
Langen and other scientists said this is part of a natural weather system, but man-made climate change has worsened this. Tom Mote of the University of Georgia said had this natural event happened 20 or 30 years ago it wouldn’t have been as bad as it is now because the air is warmer overall and carries more rain that melts the ice faster.
“Things are getting more extreme and they’re getting more common,” said NASA ice scientist Walt Meier. “We’re seeing that with Greenland and this is an indication of that.”
“This kind of freakish warm spell is another piece in the puzzle,” Meier said. “One freakish thing every once in a while you might expect. But we’re getting these things more often and that’s an indication of climate change.”
Langen said the measurements are based on scores of observations from monitors on the ice fed into a computer simulation. NASA normally measures melt with a satellite, but there are problems with the instruments, Meier said. Still, Mote said the satellite, if correct, showed on Monday conditions similar to what Denmark is reporting.
Greenland ice sheet melting is one of the more visible and key signs of man-made global warming from the burning of fossil fuels because it is causing seas to rise, putting coastal areas at risk, Meier said.
If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, which would take centuries, it could add 20 feet or more to global sea level, Meier said. But within the next century, Greenland ice melt alone could raise sea level by a couple feet, he said.
“The concern is things are moving faster than we thought,” Meier said.

 

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Financial System Is 'Absolutely, Positively Rigged' (Podcast)
Apr. 19, 2016 8:53 AM
Eric Hunsader, founder of Nanex, has been at the vanguard of warning about the dangers and the rampant fraud that the rise of high-frequency trading (HFT) algorithims have let loose in today's financial markets.
While he usually feels like a lone voice in a world happy to deceive itself, he was shocked to receive a $750,000 whistleblower award from the SEC for his efforts. He's been sadly less shocked to see that since the award was publicly announced, the abuses he reported have only become more extreme and frequent.
Of the situation that led to his award, he says:

The folks at the NYSE were selling their direct feed for north of $30,000 a month versus the SIP which is under a thousand dollars a month. Their customers are not buying it because it has that much more rich data. The thing that makes it worth $29,000 more is that it is faster, but that is illegal. Up until this point, they deny that that is the case. And somehow, it works. So the exchanges make all their money from their highest paying customers, which are the high frequency traders. And the high frequency traders pay the exchanges exorbitant amounts of money to have a slight advantage.
That's how the whole system works. It is absolutely, positively rigged. There is no question about it. It is rigged on many different levels in many different ways - for example, no retail order ever gets to see the light of day of the stock exchange. That's one of the many eye openers. People who aren't pros in the market don't realize that it's all a rigged game.
​

Hunsader also had an opportunity at one point to access the audit trail data from the CME futures exchange, data that the central authorities almost never allow outside eyes to see. What he found was clear evidence that a very small number of very large players push prices and volume around at will to vacuum up profits at the expense of everyone else:

 

[tiznow]

April 19th ...they lit the first candle

Tweet LinkedIn Google + | 5 Comments -- Published: Tuesday, 19 April 2016 | E-Mail | Print By: Bill Holter Many of us have waited for today, April 19, as we anticipated the new Chinese daily gold fix and the opening of the ABX physical exchange. Some may be disappointed, other ecstatic. I will say I am personally pleased because it was almost exactly as I suspected. Much has happened over the last couple of weeks and a lot of it has to do with "truth" being exposed. The "markets" are no different. China in my opinion is simply trying to aid in markets determining prices of gold and silver. Last Friday we got horrifying (from a contrarian standpoint) COT numbers with nearly record numbers for commercial shorts. With history as any guide, gold and silver should have already been slaughtered, they have not been. In fact, we now have silver and gold at nearly one year highs and mining equities exploding. Yesterday saw a dozen or more juniors up 25%++ for the day! As I have maintained, I believe today's action will become more frequent with the Shanghai physical demand pushing prices higher. I believe they lit the first candle of truth today, other candles will follow until the light switch gets flipped on. COMEX/LBMA will either go along in price or they will be arbitraged completely out of inventory. As I wrote several weeks back, "what good is a contract that cannot perform"? It is very possible China will let this "stew" for a while and allow the markets time to adjust to real and free pricing ...only then do I see China coming out with a gold backed yuan. If they were to do that today, it would be a declaration of war on the U.S. hegemon, if they wait, they can have cover and say "hey, it was global free markets that pushed gold out of sight". As mentioned above, commercials are very short gold and silver now, they have lost $billions just today. Maybe they continue to throw paper at gold and silver, Shanghai ain't buyin' it! No matter what the apologists say, COMEX can and will default when they can no longer deliver metal. They say "cash settlement" is not a default ...who are they kidding? This is the rally you never sell ...until you are offered a different "paper" (one that is backed by something, anything) that can be trusted. China may be making this offer in the near future! Standing watch, Bill Holter Holter-Sinclair collaboration

 

[eek.]

You can't defeat Darwinism, 10 million years of genetics hardwired into us
The Communists tried
The Fascists tried
The Liberals are currently trying

Religion has been trying for 2000 years

Utah declares porn a public health hazard
The US state of Utah has become the first to declare pornography a public health risk in a move its governor says is to "protect our families and our young people".

The bill does not ban pornography in the mainly Mormon state

One 2009 study by Harvard Business School said that Utah was the state with the highest percentage of online porn subscribers in the US.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36088194


p.s. I notice gold is in creepy uppy mode at the moment