It looks like we are past the peak:

It also looks like we approached record low levels of extent, for sea-ice at it’s maximum, (for modern times), which ordinarily would have the Alarmists cheering wildly and the Skeptics plunged into deepest gloom, but such antics seem strangely subdued, this year. Apparently we have matured, to some degree, or at least arrived at an understanding that we are dealing with some stuff that is more serious than mere trivia about sea-ice. What once could be laughed off as “conspiracy theory” is now blatant politics. We are “playing with the big boys now”.

What we-who-have-watched have seen is that the steady climb of CO2 (in modern times) haven’t had that much effect on the ups and downs of sea-ice extent, and that the ups and downs of sea-ice extent haven’t had that much of an effect on the planet’s overall temperature. This is in direct contradiction to the Alarmist theory that less ice would cause more warming, which would cause even less ice, which would cause even more warming. The Alarmists foresaw an escalation which never happened.

The Alarmism dates back to June 23, 1988, when James Hansen addressed congress about the dire dangers we as a nation faced. It is now 37 years later and his prophesies have proven false. According to the Old Testament, a false prophet is to be taken outside the borders of town and there stoned to death. Instead James Hansen gets a fat pension, and occasionally is still interviewed in articles, where he still insists things are proceeding exactly according to plan. In actual fact he will likely be remembered as the Lysenko of American Meteorology.

Lysenko? Read about that man. His false prophesy concerning the production of food crops led not only to famine in Russia, but also in China.

Lysenko is a splendid example of this odd equation: Science + Politics = Politics – Science.

Lysenko was so infatuated with communist theory that he believed even the crops obeyed its rules, which led to some warped five-year-plans. For example, at some point he decided it was wrong for farmers to thin carrot seedlings, for they represented a just “proletariat” who would share nutrients equally and produce the maximum possible. As every farmer knows, if you don’t thin your carrot seedlings you wind up with a mass of carrots fighting for nourishment, and a crop of carrots thin as hairs, rather than a few carrots thicker than thumbs. However Lysenko had the power, and any farmer who objected was deemed “counterrevolutionary”, and was purged.

In like manner we have had to live through a time when any person who objected to James Hanson’s ideas was, in a sense, purged. I don’t know what else you can call being “cancelled”, “de-funded”, and “shadow banned.” Meanwhile those who kissed the Blarney got funding. In essence, pseudoscience ruled.

No good ever comes from the denial of Truth. But this is not to say evil cannot clutch power. Stalin killed roughly fifty million of his fellow Russians, clutching power, and Mao killed roughly fifty million of his fellow Chinese, clutching power. As far as their atheism went, “good” came of the brutality, for they stayed in power. That was their definition of “good”. However such measures are not true. Eventually a Day of Reckoning arrives when one measures the good they have done using Truth as a standard, and I would not like to be either Stalin or Mao, on that day. I wouldn’t even like to be James Hansen.

The simple fact of the matter is that Global Warming was (and for some still is) a hypothesis, and a hypothesis needs to suffer what infuriated Stalin and Mao. It must be questioned. It must experience the rigors of testing. And Global Warming has simply failed the test.

However this does not shake the mindset of some, who apparently believe without thought. There are some people, (and many are good people), who have faith about certain subjects. They do not think hard, or carefully measure results, or stress their brain by delving into areas they are not familiar with.

Just for an example, one of the few things the followers of the three main religions of the West agree upon is that reincarnation is not a reality; our “one life” does not extend back before the birth of our current body and brain. People do not physically remember before they had the physical brain which they do most of their remembering with, nor do they think much about the subject of life continuing after that brain rots. Neither Atheists nor “True Believers” lose much sleep about the subject. They have a sort of faith reincarnation doesn’t happen. It may be the only thing they agree upon.

It is not wise to press such people by questioning their sort-of-faith. Why? Because you never know how they may react. Some can be quite cheerful about being cornered by the fact they accept things heedlessly, but others tend to become rabid.

I’m not sure why this happens. But I witnessed it during the initial panic about the COVID hysteria, when I wondered why people wore masks when every actual study, (within the British “Lancet” and the American “New England Journal Of Medicine“) stated masks were not effective with a virus. Some people reacted as is I was a heretic and should be burned as a witch.

In like manner, when I first questioned Global Warming I experienced a similar push-back on the part of certain true believers. I was a heretic and should be burned as a witch.

Well, now 37 years have passed and such people should, at the very least, feel chagrin about what dopes they were when young. Don’t we all feel that way, to some degree, about the goofs of our youth?

I certainly do. In fact, if you look back to my early posts about arctic sea-ice on this website, back in 2013, you can see me humbled over and over, as I was corrected about certain things. (For example, I didn’t know it was above freezing at the Pole in July.) Part of the process of learning is to see, over and over and over again, that you are mistaken. You are wrong.

Sadly, one aspect of evil is an inability to confess. The likes of Stalin and Mao were not big on confessing, unless it was you (and not them). For example, during his horrific purges Stalin went so far as to insist the generals he killed confess before he killed them, and some of the signed confessions were spattered with blood. (And afterwards Stalin had no generals and his army got it’s butt kicked by little Finland.) But Stalin was not big on confessing his own shortcomings.

If you cannot admit you are mistaken you cannot learn from your mistakes, and that is perhaps the saddest part of the past 37 years. Some never learn.

Some resisted learning due to owning the faith of a simpleton; they chose to believe without thinking. However we are now learning some resisted learning due to the money involved. By sticking to the Global Warming theory they either received money, or received kick-backs for handing out such lavish grants. Some people who received such grants did actual research, despite the political climate, and I am grateful for the hard work they did in trying times. However others produced balderdash and even attempted to prevent actual research from happening. All in all it is a sad tale, a sordid time, and also a terrible waste of decades and manpower.

One cannot pass through times poisoned by such corruption without becoming to some degree embittered, if one loves Truth. At first one is naive and suspects no evil, however cancel culture and shadow banning wakens one to the ruthless selfishness of those seduced by a hankering for power, notoriety and gratified greed. I confess I have experienced such bitterness, but I try to shake it off and focus on all that I learned.

After all, if you are a person who is able to admit they make mistakes, and able to learn from mistakes, then you see that being told you are mistaken makes you double-check things, even if the person attacking you is a goon and pathological liar. And, when you double check, you look deeper, and learn things you didn’t see at first.

Simply double-checking the graphs produced by Alarmists caused me to double check the data they used for the past, and this plunged me unto the history of the men who explored the arctic. If you look back through this blog you will learn of some wondrous tales.

But allow me to skip all that and focus on mistakes I’m learning I made the past year or two, and the wonders I am seeing now.

The big surprise, as far as I was concerned, was the warming of the Atlantic. I did not see it coming. Furthermore, it occurred at a depth I had not considered warming could or would occur. I was seeing the ocean in a top-down manner, but what was occurring was bottom-up.

I have posted, in the past, about lone holes appearing in the sea-ice which I hypothesized might be brought about by isolated plumes of warm water rising from undersea volcanoes. However I saw such activity as isolated events, and didn’t envision undersea events lifting the temperature of the entire ocean. Yet now I surmise this must be what occurred.

The problem with giving Global Warming the credit for the warming Atlantic is that the sea did not warm first at the surface, where the heat bounced back by “The Greenhouse Effect” could warm the water. In fact such bounced-back radiation lacks even the power of visible light to warm waters down many feet. Such bounce-back radiation only can penetrate a few millimeters into water. Only the very skim of the sea would be warmed. Yet we were seeing warming down below where even visible light could reach. We saw warming as far as our instruments could reach (which is only half way to the bottom, at this point.) What could cause such warming? Could it be undersea lava?

One bit of trivia I learned while studying the past was that towards the end of the Dalton Minimum there was an increase in volcanic activity, perhaps causing the year of “Eighteen Hundred And Froze To Death.” (1817) Therefore, as we passed through our recent period of fewer sunspots (which some call “The Modern Minimum”), I was keeping an ear cocked for the sound of huge eruptions like Tambora in 1815. Two summers ago Tonga fit the bill, but was in the wrong ocean to explain any of the Atlantic’s warming.

But what about the mid Atlantic ridge? The one place it was exposed, in Iceland, saw some impressing fountains of lava. What if this was occurring the entire length of that ridge? A certain scientist, Dr. V , had attended to the seismic data and he stated there indeed was an increase in earthquakes along that ridge, as the Atlantic warmed. So at least this should be a focus of study, unless of course you are so committed to Global Warming that you break out into a rash when anyone suggests any warming anywhere might have any other cause than a trace amount of CO2 overhead.

That being said, we abruptly had a warmer Atlantic, which seemed bound to head north and reduce the amount of sea ice. Oddly, this did not occur at first. At first there was unusual sea-ice along the north coast of Svalbard, even during the summer, (Where Barentsz was able to sail ice-free waters in 1696). Bizarrely, the ice on the north coast never vanished until winter came and it got cold. This year is the first time I’ve seen that ice reduced, even during the winter, hundreds of miles north of Svalbard. Then, abruptly those same waters froze. Why did the re-freeze take so long? And what happened to the WSC (West Spitsbergen Current), which usually melts the ice in those waters?

Here is where my imagination kicks in. I don’t claim to be scientific; only observant. I observe, observe, observe. And then I wonder.

One thing I was able to observe was the layered flow of the Gulf Stream from North America towards Europe, due to the hard work of a scientist. He was taking special pains to measure the northward progress of warmer waters, not just at the surface but at various depths, and was seeing that, despite all the swirling of the current, various layers, determined by the temperature and salinity of the water, displayed remarkable integrity and cohesiveness as the waters headed north, until they crossed the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Then, in essence, all his data got screwed up. He lost track of the layers, as some sort of vertical force messed up the lateral movement of the currents.

This observation, seen in waters south of Iceland, made me wonder if the warming of the Atlantic may have involved vertical plumes which interfered with the normal northward movement of the Gulf Stream, depleting the warmth of the WSC. This would allow sea-ice to grow on the north coast of Svalbard. However, with the entire Atlantic warming, the warmth could be delayed but not denied, and eventually the sea-ice retreated far from the north coast (only to return later.)

*******

Well, time has past and we are now well past the minimum.

The graph was described by one observer as “flat-lining.” I suppose, if you are into sensationalism, you could even speak of “record slow melt.” I myself just stroke my jaw, and observe, observe, observe.

One interesting factoid brought up by the aforementioned Dr. V is that the seismic activity along the mid-Atlantic ridge has recently lessened in a striking manner, which may indicate the outflow of sea-bottom lava has ceased, and we may see the Atlantic now cool. Formerly this would cause gloom among Alarmists and wild Cheering from Skeptics, but now I think more reasonable minds are taking over, and we may see what Dr. William Gray urged decades ago, and Al Gore prevented: The gathering of data that would allow us to better understand our planet’s thermohaline circulation.

Already scientists are looking at the effects of the Tonga volcanic blast in a manner that Al Gore would not approve of. Al felt as if Global Warming should be entirely blamed on CO2, and any search for other influences on the climate was a sort of heresy. He used his considerable influence and power to de-fund all who dared differ, likely thinking he was encourage a lazer-like focus, when in fact he was guilty of myopia and his own form of Lysenko-ism. Sadly, as is all too often the case with such power-crazed, small-minded people, rather than improving the environment he sincerely wished to rescue from pollution, he has degraded that environment with windmills, solar panels, and the mines for the rare earths needed for such “green” projects. While Gore power-politics hasn’t led to the famines Lysenko brewed from rich farmlands, one can easily envision how such consequences can manifest.

However scientists could not resist studying the after-effects of the Tonga explosion. Largely the focus took a top-down view, focusing on the water vapor blasted right out of the troposphere into the ultra dry stratosphere. A deep study from Judith Curry’s site can be found here:

https://judithcurry.com/2024/07/05/hunga-tonga-volcano-impact-on-record-warming/?amp=1

Besides the top-down studies, there also should be bottom-up studies, I now think. Formerly I did not think so. The truth is that I found the idea of gentle sunbeams effecting mighty volcanoes laughable. It was only through the process of studying history that I’d even consider the possibility. And even then the results of recorded volcanic activity were such a mixed bag that it seemed impossible to say what effect they had, in a cohesive manner.

For example, the Dalton Minimum produced two of the greatest eruptions of the past millennium, only five years apart. Ash from the eruptions can be found in ice-cores from both Greenland and Antarctica. And afterwards there were extremely cold summers and crop failures in both New England and Western Europe. However, just to mess up all calculations, there was record heat in Russia, and the Arctic Ocean was reported by whalers to be amazingly ice-free. So…what was the effect of the two volcanoes? Likely not much, if you average things out. If you add iceburgs around Ireland to blazing heat in Siberia, they cancel each other out and you wind up with a number that suggests things were “normal.”

Years ago I had the honor of a brief exchange with the late Dr. Tim Ball at the WUWT website, and he told me about a gathering of scientists held in Canada to discuss the strange weather associated with the Dalton Minimum. The top climate scientist of that time, Herbert Lamb, was unable to make it, but he sent some of his closest assistants. This was back before the Lysenko-ists said there could only be one view, (CO2 caused all), and all other views were “denial.” Instead it was a conclave of great minds holding views from every angle, and enjoying hearing ideas they had never thought of before. They had a wonderful time sharing ideas.

It really sounds like the late 1950’s and early 1960’s were a wonderful time to be a scientist. They could be from different countries and not have a cold war. When they differed they were like differing keys of a piano, capable of harmony. A Lysenko-ist like Micheal Mann is like a single key of the piano saying “I am right and all the rest of you need to be cancelled!”

In any case, despite all the great minds, that particular gathering of scientists was humble, and confessed they simply didn’t know enough to explain the oddness of the Dalton Minimum. However they did suspect that the jet stream had become extremely “meridenal”. In other words, it looped very far south and very far north, even to a degree where icebergs which ordinarily reside north of Greenland were blown to the coast of Ireland.

And what they craved was more data. And that was what Dr. William Gray wanted. More data. But that is exactly what Al Gore wanted to prevent. He preferred stupidity. Keep people stupid and he’d keep the power. And then he could do all the good things he planned to do, but never did do, unless you are as mad as Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, and think the needless death of millions is good.

At this point I face a fork in the road of this discussion. Either I discuss sea-ice, or I discuss politics.

What I shall do is both. I shall walk both roads, with my feet farther and and farther apart until I am doing a split.

In terms of sea-ice, I expect some wild variations to occur, if “The Modern Minimum” is anything like “The Dalton Minimum”. The jet stream becomes “meridional” when the atmosphere has been in some way imbalanced, and seeks to get back in balance. Just as the seasons force the atmosphere to make some drastic adjustments, the “sunspot cycle” forces it to adjust as well.

The thing I’m considering in my old age, that I never even thought about when younger, is that there are some levels of “atmosphere” we have neglected. Obviously the ocean is a sort of liquid atmosphere, and currents can shift just as jet streams shift, but also less obviously the solid earth can shift, especially when it isn’t solid and is magma. I admit it is hard to consider solid earth as an “atmosphere”, but I think it actually is.

Just as we have maps that record the streams of air at various levels of the atmosphere, and just as we need maps of currents at various depths of our oceans, we also need maps of what way the lava is flowing, and how fast. This will involve a huge amount of research and a huge amount of learning, and the last thing we need is the complete idiots who say “science is settled” and there’s nothing left to learn.

And that actually the second fork in the road. Rather than the sea-ice itself, I’d like to study the complete idiots I’ve met by the way.

To bring back the analogy of a piano keyboard, there is something painfully tragic about a single key insisting it is right and all others cannot be trusted and must be cancelled.

How much better it is when you can accept other’s views, and can be in harmony with the the other keys on the keyboard.

Our Creator obviously wanted us to differ. Just look at our fingerprints. Furthermore, He apparently wanted us to love those who differ, our neighbors and even our enemies. Therefore it is wrong to use differences as a reason to divorse. Rather it should be a reason to shout, “Vive la différence!”

This new study may seem to have no connection to sea-ice, but it actually sprang from my experiences clashing with Alarmists, over the past twenty years. (And, even as I alter my focus, I will not forget to check up on the actual sea-ice, from time to time.)

Stay tuned.