Giant blob of superheated rock under West Antarctica

A new seismic survey shows there is a blob of superheated rock 60 miles below West Antarctica. To describe it, the researchers use the phrase “like a blow-torch”. Of course, just because the parts of Antarctica that are warming are near or over this hot blob does not mean it’s causing the melting. It could be a coincidence. ; -)

… this is the first detailed look at the Earth beneath this region.

Not surprisingly, the maps show a giant blob of superheated rock about 60 miles beneath Mount Sidley, the last of a chain of volcanic mountains in Marie Byrd Land at one end of the transect. More surprisingly, they reveal hot rock beneath the Bentley Subglacial Trench, a deep basin at the other end of the transect.

The Bentley Subglacial Trench is part of the West Antarctic Rift System and hot rock beneath the region indicates that this part of the rift system was active quite recently.

The study really highlights how little we know about heat flow in Antarctica:

While heat flow through the Earth’s crust has been measured at at least 34,000 different spots around the globe, in Antarctica it has been measured in less than a dozen places. In July 2015, scientists reported the heat flow at one of these spots was four times higher than the global average.

Ever since then, scientists have been wondering why the reading was so high. “Recent extension in the Bentley Subglacial Trench might explain these readings,” Wiens said.

 

West Antarctica, rift, volcano, tectonic plate, global warming.

 The IPCC says the West Antarctic is melting thanks to CO2.

Though they can’t explain why the rest of Antarctica doesn’t appear to be melting as well.

West Antarctica, Volcano, Global WArming

Naturally we don’t have any idea if the heat flows have gotten stronger lately since we didn’t know about the hot rocks before, and rather oddly, the volcanoes are going in the “wrong direction”:

“A line of volcanoes hints there might be a hidden mantle plume, like a blowtorch, beneath the plate,” said Doug Wiens, PhD, professor of earth and planetary sciences and a co-author on the paper. “The volcanoes would pop up in a row as the plate moved over it.”

“But it’s a bit unclear if this is happening here,” he said. We think we know which direction the plate is moving, but the volcanic chain is going in a different direction and two additional nearby volcanic chains are oriented in yet other directions.

The Full press release

REFERENCE

Lloyd et al (2015) A seismic transect across West Antarctica: Evidence for mantle thermal anomalies beneath the Bentley Subglacial Trench and the Marie Byrd Land Dome. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 2015; DOI: 10.1002/2015JB012455

9.2 out of 10 based on 88 ratings

134 comments to Giant blob of superheated rock under West Antarctica

  • #
    F. Ross

    I have no doubt whatsoever that manmade CO2 caused the “blob”.

    Need I add /sarc?

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    • #
      Vlad the Impaler

      I think you mean that the volcanoes are ‘CO2-volcanoes’. Obviously, they are being heated by their brethren in the atmosphere, and, just as the ‘heat’ is ‘hiding’ in the deep ocean, this ‘heat’ is heating up the CO2-magma deep in the crust, and causing the ground beneath the ice sheet to melt.

      There! My research project is consistent with the CAGW idea, so I can get more funding to study this problem in more ‘depth’.

      Pun intended.

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    • #
      bobl

      I think it’s certain that CO2 has helped to cause the green blob!

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    I propose this activity is named ‘Trenberth’s Chain’.

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    • #
      sophocles

      Yonnistone says:

      I propose this activity is named ‘Trenberth’s Chain’.

      WAGI! 🙂

      (What A Good Idea.)

      You can’t get as Natural as a natural volcanic hot spot. It’s so nice watching “settled Science” being so naturally debunked.

      With all the volcanoes “going in a different direction ” and “nearby volcanic chains are oriented in yet other directions.” it’s obvious what’s happening. It’s isostatic squishing. The huge weight of the ice on Eastern Antarctica is causing that to sink and the hot spot is being squished out one side. You can get the same effect by placing a big frisbee upside down on, and off to one side of, a fresh cow-pat, then standing on the frisbee … slowly … the cow-pat squishes. 🙂

      (Tongue In Cheek …)

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  • #
    Dean

    This is simply raw data.

    The homogenisation is yet to be completed.

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  • #

    Not knowing is bad enough but knowing what isn’t so is even worse. So many times I have heard “we have found no evidence….”. I think the question, “Did you look?”. This kind of thing suggests looking without seeing and then jumping to conclusions without being sure there is a place to land.

    The lightly considered evidence they thought they saw fit the narrative and that was good enough for them. Yet, when you actually look a bit deeper, you find the same evidence on the surface but a far different conclusion supported by the deeper evidence.

    The chicken little’s of the melting ice fields jumped but have yet to come down to earth. There was no there, there.

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    • #

      The lightly considered evidence they thought they saw fit the narrative and that was good enough for them.

      This is precisely what’s driving climate science. They then use a number of these weak arguments to circularly support each other using the logic that two wrongs make a right. With each iteration punctuated by an IPCC AR, the science diverges further away from reality, which is the expected consequence of this kind of confirmation bias.

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien

        Like the announcement by the CSIRO 25+ years ago that “Cows are Australia’s biggest source of greenhouse gases”, just a few years after the Hawke government appointed d partisan board to the CSIRO.

        You see, cows underpinned the businesses in the agricultural sector which operated on the small business capitalist system. This was reinforced by the initial proposal for an ETS, which flatly refused to allow credits for the sequestration side of agriculture’s carbon cycle.

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  • #

    But Jo, volcanoes and/or fissures aren’t in the terms of reference at the IPCC, so how can they cause any warming?

    Let’s just stick to the terms of reference shall we? 😛 … no need to complicate matters needlessly.

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  • #
    Neville

    Another new study for OZ droughts was reviewed on ABC Vic Country hour yesterday. This covers the period 1500 to 2012 and like the Calvo and Vance studies this shows that the period from 1900 to 2015 is about as good as it gets.

    http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/12/124002/pdf And here is another reference.

    http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/500-years-drought-and-flood-trees-and-corals-reveal-australia%E2%80%99s-climate-history This second link gives an overview and it shows that all of the worst droughts occurred before 1900. We must surely be doing something right? SARC.

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  • #
    TdeF

    So an area as big as South America covered by kilometers of ice and with winter temperatures of -50C is not well understood? I thought the Science was in on Antarctica? Since Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911 and Hillary Climbed Everest in 1953 and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969 I thought man now controlled the planet’s temperature? This superheated rock could cause real problems. Who is responsible for this superheated rock and can it be fixed by immediate taxation of the selfish richer industrialized countries to assist the poorer developing people forced to live in tropical beach paradises cope with the yet unknown consequences of lava pollution and volcanic activity and increased tourism. Oh, the humanity.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Puzzled that my comment is in moderation. So Science temperature superheated taxation tropical lava pollution tourism humanity. Plus Hillary climbed Everest. Maybe Amundsen? It might be rude word in eskimo.

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      • #
        RB

        Qumli

        Looks like your theory is debunked.

        30

        • #
          RB

          Tiaavuluk! Supposed to be a reply to TdeF.

          30

          • #
            TdeF

            So an area as big as South America covered by kilometers of ice and with winter temperatures of -50C is not well understood? I thought the Science was in on Antarctica? Since Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911 and Hillary Climbed Everest in 1953 and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969 I thought man now controlled the planet’s temperature? This superheated rock could cause real problems.

            30

          • #
            TdeF

            Who is responsible for this superheated rock and can it be fixed by immediate taxation of the selfish richer industrialized countries to assist the poorer developing people forced to live in tropical beach paradises cope with the yet unknown consequences of lava pollution and volcanic activity and increased tourism. Oh, the humanity.

            80

        • #
          TdeF

          So an area as big as South America covered by kilometers of ice and with winter temperatures of -50C is not well understood? I thought the Science was in on Antarctica?

          51

        • #
          TdeF

          Amundsen South Pole 1*11

          20

    • #
      TdeF

      I have it. The moderation software is stuck on the date 19eleven as offensive! To whom? Please remove the testing comments.

      So an area as big as South America covered by kilometers of ice and with winter temperatures of -50C is not well understood? I thought the Science was in on Antarctica? Since Amundsen reached the South Pole in 19eleven and Hillary Climbed Everest in 1953 and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969 I thought man now controlled the planet’s temperature? This superheated rock could cause real problems. Who is responsible for this superheated rock and can it be fixed by immediate taxation of the selfish richer industrialized countries to assist the poorer developing people forced to live in tropical beach paradises cope with the yet unknown consequences of lava pollution and volcanic activity and increased tourism. Oh, the humanity.

      50

      • #
        TdeF

        I can only find the first International Women’s day, the Mexican revolution and of course Roald Amundsen’s conquest of Antarctica in the evil year 19*1.

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        • #
          James Murphy

          I’m not sure how well the Greens would receive Amundsen these days. Hillary gets a hard enough time from the PC brigade for using Sherpas.

          Unless I am very much mistaken, a part of Amundsen’s success could be put down to the fact that his party took more dogs than required just for transport, as they were the intended food supply for the men, and the other dogs – much easier to let your food walk itself, rather than have to carry it.

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        • #
          Joe

          TdeF, I think you will find it is just the last three digits of your date causing the red flag.

          10

    • #
      sophocles

      It just might get some Elder Statesmen’s lava-lavas in a twist …

      10

  • #
    ossqss

    One wonders if this may be an event similar to how the Hawaiian islands were created?

    70

    • #
      Tom O

      That is what he is implying with the exception that he added that the volcanoes aren’t forming in the direction they think it should since the concept of plate tectonics says they should form in a different direction. What I find interesting is if you look at what he says objectively, the implication would be that plate tectonics may be being falsified by what they see. I’m betting that like all the rest of what science has become, it won’t be considered from that standpoint.

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      • #
        ossqss

        I would think the coriolis effect or general influence of rotation at that latutude has some impact on movement to a much lesser/different degree than similar other incidents of such.

        30

    • #
      Ted O'Brien

      Or something much more cataclysmic!

      30

      • #
        dp

        Yes – there is a crack in the earth and volcanoes are coming up as the crack grows in length and weakness. You can see this same thing in the western states of the US from Southern California to BC, Canada as evidenced by massive lava flows. Interestingly, the Yellowstone super-volcano caldera is the newest in a chain of such caldera that stretch to Washington State, and which chain formed as the North American plate, or the hot spot under it, moved over time. So in one region we have both hotspots and linear fissures with active, explosive volcanoes that stretch for hundreds of miles.

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    • #

      Indeed and in the case of antarctica think of the effect on the climate if large areas suddenly were warmed from below or suddenly stopped being warmed.

      btw we have this in Australia

      http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-15/world%27s-longest-continental-volcanic-chain-in-australia/6769360

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      • #
        el gordo

        Looking at the Nature paper they have a theory on the hotspot stall.

        ‘Our reconstructions, however, place the mantle plume that generated the Cosgrove hotspot track, 50 km to the east of the NVP, from 6.5 Ma to 5 Ma.

        ‘We speculate that the capture and entrainment of this plume, into a pre-existing EDC cell, was the trigger for mag-matism within the NVP and explains the absence of a hotspot track to the south of Cosgrove.’

        20

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Gee Aye:

        How does this tie in with the extinct? volcanoes in western Victoria and around Mt. Gambier in S.A.? These are newer and I think Prof. Plimer pointed out that the last eruption was offshore southern S.A. around 1967.

        10

  • #

    Might I recommend a Lenton et al 2007 Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system. A load of climate scientist got together and justified all the scary scenarios that could happen with runaway global warming. Third on the list was the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice. It is only a matter of time before everyone will be contradicted by the evidence.

    Others include
    1. Arctic Sea-Ice. As sea-ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation–amplifying the warming. Only the retreat seems to have stopped.
    2. Greenland Ice Sheet melt will accelerate. Not heard about this accelerating ice melt in recent years.
    3. WAIS – See article.
    6. Indian Summer Monsoon – will collapse
    7. Sahara/Sahel and West African Monsoon – collapse of vegetation will lead to a collapse of the local monsoon. We now know the Sahel is greening.
    8. Amazon Rainforest will collapse due to lack of recycled rainfall as a result of deforestation. But this should have happened, as 22% of the Amazon has been lost, as against the 22-30% needed for the tipping point. It is also contradicted by another related bogus theory – the “flying rivers” – blamed for the São Paulo Drought of last year.

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  • #

    Somewhat off-topic, but I thought this to be quite important and maybe Jo can shed some light on what Wally Aleed (that’s what I call him – an expert in everything) asserted: http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/waleed-aly-takes-on-andrew-bolt-over-climate-change-let-me-nip-this-in-the-bud/ar-AAgdwk3?li=AAavLaF&ocid=mailsignout

    “Let me nip this in the bud, Andrew Bolt, before you launch into your whole ‘but it has stopped warming’ line that you’ve been running for the last few years,” Aly said.

    “This is Carl Mears, the guy whose graph you keep using. We tracked him down, he has a message for you.”

    “It’s pretty clear that the globe has warmed over the last 18 years,” said Mears. “When you do real science you can’t just use the data sets that fit your pre-drawn conclusions, but you really need to look at all the data together.”

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    • #
      RB

      there is not much doubt that the rate of warming since the late 1990’s is less than that predicted by most of the IPCC AR5 simulations of historical climate. This can be seen in the RSS data, as well as most other temperature datasets.

      Carl Mears in the RSS blog

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      • #

        It’s so easy for the talking heads to make up anything that they want, when there’s no way for anyone to dispute their assertions? Did our darling of the Left miss this one, is comprehension lacking, or maybe not enough research was attempted?

        In this post, I offer my view on the cause of the hiatus.

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        • #

          Bugger, forgot to remove the question mark. And, as usual, The Age makes this front page news. I wonder if any comments posting Mears’ statements regarding the hiatus will be accepted?

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien

      Timing! Timing! Timing!

      Andrew Bolt has gone on holidays! Waleed Aly is grabbing the opportunity.

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    • #
      handjive

      The Blob of super heated, poorly researched, clueless rock under Antarctica has a name: Waleed Aly.

      Aly Pwnd by RB@Jonova.
      . . .
      NCDC/NESDIS/NOAA Graph:
      Jan-Dec Global Mean Temperature over Land & Ocean 1880-2015

      Does the tail wag the dog?

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    • #
      Bulldust

      Well why not go straight to the source. They say RSS, they say 18 years, they talk of trend … Wood for Trees, here it is:

      http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2015/plot/rss/from:1997/to:2015/trend

      See that trend? Actually mildly negative. So either Waleed is quoting Mears out of context or Mears can’t read his own data properly. Either way Bolt is correct in his assertion and Waleed is simply rude and wrong. But he won’t let the facts get in the way of his ideology of course.

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      • #
        Bill_W

        Mears said to look at all the data sets, not just his
        own satellite data set.

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        • #
          RB

          Important to remember that RSS was started as a check of the work of UAH’s Spencer and Christy who are sceptics and believe that the pause is significant in the arguments about the modeling (both luke warmers). The UAH guys are the original inventors of a method to calculate global temperature anomalies using satellites. What is quoted is Carl Mears is in denial of what the science says because not long ago, it was the consensus amongst climatologists that the satellites would give the better estimates.

          31

  • #
  • #
    ianl8888

    Some may be wondering why the maps in this post seem to have rotated the Antarctic continent about 90o, with the West Antarctic peninsula pointing in the apparently wrong direction (at least,a direction not normally seen in maps of the area)

    The only comment I can make here is that when one is starting from the S pole, every direction and all directions, are North

    Apart from that, the seismic survey has produced fascinating results

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    • #
      ianl8888

      That’s 90o – I know I typed it like that the 1st time, too

      In case the same robotic editing occurs again, that’s 90 degress

      21

    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      On a standard MS_Windows keyboard the degrees symbol can be gotten by holding down the ALT key and then typing the digits 0176: like so °
      With other systems other key sequences may do.

      30

      • #
        AndyG55

        or just use the accessory called “character map”

        10

      • #
        ianl8888

        What actually happened is that I typed “0” followed by “o”, which should be clear enough without going through the whole Alt key rigmarole (yes, I’ve known they exist since 1980 but I couldn’t care less about mucking around with it all the time)

        But nope. When you type 0 directly followed by o, it appears in the comment as oo, that is the software programme used here on the website interprets 0 followed directly by o as oo

        … such is life – too short to muck around with this junk

        10

        • #
          ianl8888

          It’s intepreting ZERO as the letter o, as in lmnop etc

          So I’ll just post the number nine hundred next, and see if I get 9 followed by two o letters

          900

          10

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      One hot blob was 100km depth and the other one mentioned was 1km depth in the trench. I was concerned that at such depth it would be quite well insulated from the ice and perhaps people were jumping to conclusions about its influence on ice loss. Was the hot rock actually in contact with the ice?

      10

      • #
        Wayne Job

        Heat tends to rise even in solids, the real hot stuff may be deep but not far down almost everywhere on earth is very warm. Everyone can heat their house with a bore,100ft is enough, a pipe down to a copper coil and back to the surface, some radiators and a small pump.

        10

  • #
    el gordo

    The environment editor at the Oz (Graham LLoyd) should run with this.

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  • #
    Robk

    The research is good work and the findings are important. I, as probably many readers of this site, am surprised that the researchers are surprised. At the risk of sounding vain it seemed like quite a likely representation of the prior knowledge. I have never been convinced of atmospheric warming having much to do with it. Perhaps the authors needed to express surprise for it to be more palatable to the alarmists. It will take a bit of adjustment to smooth it away.

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    • #
      Robk

      “But it’s a bit unclear if this is happening here,” he said. We think we know which direction the plate is moving, but the volcanic chain is going in a different direction and two additional nearby volcanic chains are oriented in yet other directions.
      My guess here is that the several kilometers thick ice which has depressed the center of the continent to 1.5km below sea level is forcing the plume vents away from the compression in several directions. This could also put the plate under compression from the top and tension due to drag from below.

      50

  • #
    pat

    bemused –

    COUPLE OF POINTS FROM THE COMMENTS TO KEEP IN MIND AS YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WUWT THREAD:

    BILL ILLIS: Let’s remember several years ago when all the heavy-weights of climate science produced a paper that said the lower troposphere pause had to be at least 17 years long before a clear signal that human-made CO2 warming theories should start to be questioned.
    Carl Mears was the second author on that paper along Ben Santer (lead) [and Tom Wigley, Susan Solomon, Tom Karl, Gerald Meehl, Peter Stott, Peter Thorne, Frank Wentz].
    Well, that time has now been exceeded and they all have egg on their face.
    http://nldr.library.ucar.edu/repository/assets/osgc/OSGC-000-000-010-476.pdf

    dbstealey: Mears doesn’t understand. The year 1997 was chosen specifically by Phil Jones as the start year for statistically determining whether global warming had stopped.
    Thus 1997 is the year chosen by the Warmist clique themselves, not by skeptics.

    Oct 2014: WUWT: It’s official: no global warming for 18 years 1 month
    Global Temperature Update By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
    RSS itself is now taking a serious interest in the length of the Great Pause. Dr Carl Mears, the senior research scientist at RSS, has a long and intriguing discussion of the Pause, and of the widening divergence between the models’ excitable predictions and the mundane reality in the RSS blog, at remss.com/blog/recent-slowing-rise-global-temperatures.
    Dr Mears’ results are summarized in Fig. 2:…
    Dr Mears writes:
    “The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation. This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”
    Dr Mears’ regrettable use of the word “denialists”, with its deliberate overtones of comparison with Holocaust deniers, reveals Dr Mears as what we may call a “liarist” – one who is prone to push the evidence in the profitable direction of greater alarm than is scientifically justified.
    Interestingly, therefore, the RSS data, which show less recent warming than all other datasets, are under the management of a liarist, while the UAH data, which (until v. 6 becomes available at any rate) continue to show more warming than the others, are managed by sceptics.
    Dr Mears admits the discrepancy between the RSS data and the models’ exaggerations, but he echoes various trolls here in alleging the supposed “cherry-picking” of the start-date for the global-temperature graph…
    The Great Pause is a growing embarrassment to those who had told us with “substantial confidence” that the science was settled and the debate over. Nature had other ideas. Dr Mears, rightly, says the Pause is probably attributable to several factors rather than one. But the one factor he hastily rules out is any major error in the physics of the models.
    Though more than 50 more or less implausible excuses for the Pause are appearing in nervous reviewed journals, the possibility that the Pause is occurring because the computer models are simply wrong about the sensitivity of temperature to manmade greenhouse gases can no longer be dismissed…READ ALL
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/02/its-official-no-global-warming-for-18-years-1-month/

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  • #
    pat

    have posted a response for bemused re Carl Mears, but it has gone into moderation.

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  • #
    Edward Hurst

    The seismic device is in quite a deep hole…maybe 15-16 feet. Can anyone help answer these queries…Is this depth of snow typical of that area? What thickness of ice does that ultimately represent? Is the ice melting faster than the accumulation? Or do they bury the device in the first place?

    Thank you for your thoughts.

    Edward

    10

  • #
    RB

    The IPCC says the West Antarctic is melting thanks to CO2.

    Though they can’t explain why the rest of Antarctica doesn’t appear to be melting as well.

    Actually, the claim is its flowing faster into the sea and then melting. They extrapolate melting of a few basins where the ice is sitting on bedrock that slopes towards the open ocean to the ice anchored in that trench.

    20

  • #
    Bruce of Newcastle

    West Antarctica is heavily influenced by the Pacific Ocean. The PDO peaked in the mid 1990’s and is now starting to fall fast as the ~60 year cycle continues. So that warming data for the West Antarctic is also likely to include the period 1970-1995 when the PDO was rising fastest. In global temperature that was about 0.3 C (see this detrended graph of HadCRUT 3v to see the magnitude of the cycle). Since temperature swings are more pronounced at the poles its likely that the cycle could explain just about all the recent West Antarctic temperature rise, although certainly the volcanos would also contribute.

    The climateers refuse to recognise the ~60 year cycle because if they did they’d have to recognise it contributed about 70% of global warming in the period 1970-2000. That would kill the CAGW scare stone cold dead and also kill their budgets.

    The sea surface temperatures off West Antarctica are currently well below average, which is consistent with the falling PDO.

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  • #
    Ted O'Brien

    Now I always thought that the whole world had a great blob of superheated rock under it, and that that heat is being steadily conducted to the surface and eventually into space. Indeed I have wondered why the AGW campaign hasn’t appeared to consider this.

    So I take it that they have discovered a place where more heat is being emitted at the surface. Is this because the mantle is thinner, or because the material there is a better conductor? And will the resulting catastrophe take 5 minutes or 10?

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … Is this because the mantle is thinner …

      Lower viscosity, actually

      The mantle, and associated gravity wells, is surprisingly “lumpy”

      There is a peer-reviewed paper published a few years ago in the International Journal of Geology that gave good evidence for rate changes in tectonic plate movements caused by random bunching of continental masses unbalancing the planetary spin somewhat and generating faster continental slide to break up the bunching. Fascinating geomagnetic evidence …

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  • #
    pat

    this story is all over the MSM:

    9 Dec: news.com.au: Marnie O’Neill: Here’s what blind prophet Baba Vanga predicted for 2016 and beyond: It’s not good
    A BLIND mystic who reportedly foretold 9/11, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear spill and the birth of ISIS also made dire predictions for 2016 and beyond.
    Bulgaria-born Prophetess Baba Vanga, who died in 1996 aged 85, was known as “Nostradamus from the Balkans” thanks to a purported 85 per cent success rate and has long been revered in Russia and Europe as a kind of supernatural saint.
    ***Of the hundreds of predictions Vanga made over her 50-year career as a celebrated clairvoyant, a large number alluded to natural and climate change-related disasters. She warned of melting polar ice caps and rising sea temperatures back in the 1950s, decades before anyone had heard of global warming…
    She later served as an adviser to Bulgarian Communist Party leaders, some of whom allegedly exploited her gift to further their own agendas…
    THE MOST FAMOUS BABA VANGA PROPHECIES TO ‘COME TRUE’
    Predicted in the 1950s: Global warming and the 2004 Tsunami.
    “Cold regions will become warm … and volcanoes will awaken. A huge wave will cover a big coast covered with people and towns, and everything will disappear beneath the water.”
    “Everything will melt, just like ice.”…
    http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/heres-what-blind-prophet-baba-vanga-predicted-for-2016-and-beyond-its-not-good/news-story/6adaca964c9bde14e21103ee7d4fbc1d

    9 Dec: Ninemsn: Sam Downing: No, a blind Bulgarian psychic didn’t predict Muslim extremists will start WWIII in 2016
    There’s no need to book plane tickets to see the Amalfi Coast before it’s reduced to barren rubble. Baba Vanga’s powers make a cracking story. But they’re also total B.S…
    It’s possible Vanga spoke or wrote down her prophecies in Bulgarian, and they’ve never been credibly translated into English. But a 2012 Washington Post investigation suggested a more likely source for all these predictions credited to her name: Russian social media and “conspiracy theory websites”.
    (Marnie O’Neill, who wrote the super-viral yarn for News.com.au that inspired this week’s Vanga fever, told me via Twitter that the predictions in her article are sourced via the web.)…
    A 1995 profile on the blind clairvoyant by The New York Times noted that “each time Vanga predicts an event correctly … her legend grows.” It then added: “inaccurate predictions … are quickly forgotten.”
    For example…READ ON
    Read more at http://pickle.ninemsn.com.au/2015/12/09/11/40/baba-vanga#o1a828dGt8t0gV2q.99
    http://pickle.ninemsn.com.au/2015/12/09/11/40/baba-vanga

    Blind Bulgarian clairvoyant Baba Vanga ‘predicted the rise of ISIS’
    Daily Mail‎ – 1 day ago

    Here’s what blind prophet Baba Vanga predicted for 2016 and …
    dailytelegraph.com.au-7Dec.,2015

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  • #
    pat

    multiple stories plus links to latest draft text:

    9 Dec: Mashable COP21 Latest:
    Annotated guide to the draft Paris climate agreement (LINK)…

    NEXT: High Ambition Coalition vows to hold firm in coming days by Andrew Freedman

    NEXT: 10 activists arrested for creating oily footprints in the Louvre

    NEXT: Reactions to new draft negotiating text

    NEXT: New, slimmer draft negotiating text emerges in Paris
    The areas of remaining disagreement are:…
    Differentiation – how developed countries will be treated compared to developing nations.
    Financing – how much climate aid will be provided to developing nations, and whether developing countries will be required or encouraged to also provide aid.
    Level of ambition – what is the goal of the agreement, in terms of a temperature target and other matters? The temperature goal of the agreement is still bracketed, meaning it is still being actively negotiated.
    Long-term goal – are we aiming for complete decarbonization of the world economy by 2100? A 90% drop in emissions? 40%?
    Loss and damage – how will countries that suffer damage from climate change be compensated for this? Right now, the entire loss and damage section is in brackets.
    http://mashable.com/2015/11/30/cop21-paris-climate-talks-live-blog/#s2mOZrRVkkqA

    10 Dec: BusinessStandardIndia: Nitin Sethi: Revised Paris package out: Differentiation remains unresolved
    The version, much smaller than the previous iteration of 48 pages, stood at 29 pages with the differences captured between 366 brackets and 47 options…
    A senior negotiator for the Africa group said while some African countries were also part of this alliance, it did not reflect the views of the total Africa Group of Nations — the forum through which all the countries in the continent negotiate. “This ‘Act alliance’ with the EU is primarily meant for the purpose of ***trade negotiations,” he said…
    http://wap.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/revised-paris-package-out-differentiation-remains-unresolved-115120901390_1.html

    since Nitin Sethi wrote the above article, he has tweeted in the last hour:

    latest Nitin Sethi tweet: So is Africa Group of Nations now not ambitious coz they ask for CBDR? #COP21 turned on its head

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      Ross

      Pat

      It seems this talkfest is limping along to it’s conclusion and will provide another ineffective agreement ( I hope I’m right!). So the “luvvies” will be filling out their diary entries for the next talkfest –where is next year’s one scheduled to be ?

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    pat

    given divide & conquer is rampant at COP21 right now, the following provides further examples.
    I am often critical of Democracy Now, but at least they covered this story.
    ***however, it is almost impossible to find it on the Democracy Now website, where it should still be prominent on their homepage. I only found it by linking from Nitin Sethi’s twitter page.
    Amy Goodman, like ABC/Fairfax/Guardian & even Murdoch media doesn’t like to expose Obama, especially as regards CAGW:

    VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 8 Dec: Democracy Now: “Loss and Damage”: U.S. Stymies Push for Compensation for Climate Devastation at U.N. Climate Summit
    Many of the countries most impacted by climate change—but who did little to cause it—are also calling for the U.N. climate agreement to include compensation for adjusting to climate change, known as “Loss and Damage.” But documents obtained by our guest reveal the United States is pushing these countries to forgo such rights. Nitin Sethi is senior associate editor at the Business Standard in India…
    AMY GOODMAN: Wait. Wait, wait, wait. So they’re (US) saying you can use the words “loss and damage.”…
    AMY GOODMAN: But only if you agree that you don’t get compensation…
    NITIN SETHI: Absolutely. Now, that really means loss and damage is only a notional idea at the end of the day. You’re looking at risk insurance at the best of the times that might comfort some countries, but the poor countries can’t afford insurance because the premiums are going to be so high. So consider the fact that if you have sea level change, no insurance company is going to ensure you against sea level rise, because it’s almost a certainty. The risk levels are so high. The premiums are going to be so high, the poor countries can’t afford it. So the only option they had in the long run was some hope that you would be compensated…
    AMY GOODMAN: Now, President Obama met with small island nation presidents…
    AMY GOODMAN: This is—is this actually what he was telling them? We got the word he said, “I’m an island boy myself, right, grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.”
    NITIN SETHI: Absolutely. Well, as per all countries, I think there’s a big degree of game that they all play, a theatric that they play. If you look at what happened after President Obama met these few countries—say, Marshall Islands, Saint Lucia and others—each of them came out saying, “Well, we’re working with the U.S. for a language which is convenient to the U.S.” Now, that actually signifies that there’s a break even amongst what’s called the Association of Small Island States, which is comprised of Caribbean island states, those in the Pacific, those in the Indian Ocean and the African region. The Association of the Island States are cracking away under the pressure from U.S. We’ve seen the Caribbean islands move away. In fact, we hear now that even Tuvalu is saying, “Maybe we can live with the fact that we’ll not have compensation.”…
    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about U.N. censorship? What I mean is, we spoke to Yeb Sano the other day. Now he is a pilgrim who walked from Rome here to Paris, but he’s not the chief climate negotiator for the Philippines, as he was. He was pulled right before Lima, Peru, the last COP.
    NITIN SETHI: I mean, if you remember, you can go back to Copenhagen, where you had Di-Aping Lumumba from Sudan. If you remember, he was the first one to talk about issues of apartheid, the way developing countries were being treated. We never saw him back in the negotiations thereafter. It’s happened to Yeb Sano two years ago, because he fought really hard to get loss and damage in when nobody else was standing up for it. He disappeared. In fact, so far, the Philippines had to walk away. Philippines was forced to move away from the like-minded developing countries, because they were pretty strong. Now Philippines is part of the vulnerable countries group, where they actually don’t have a stand on loss and damage anymore. This year, again, if you remember, a few days ago, the G77 chair, Ambassador Diseko from South Africa, she actually on the court said, “My country is getting phone calls saying take certain negotiators out of the talking rooms because they’re being hardliners.” And we’ve seen one of the key negotiators for the G77 group was Juan Hoffmaister from Bolivia, and he’s nowhere in the room anymore. And he’s the key guy on loss and damage and adaptation.
    AMY GOODMAN: Who’s taking him out? Who’s taking all these people out?
    NITIN SETHI: Well, nobody said who’s taking them out. But you clearly know in whose favor it is if you take these guys out. It’s primarily the U.S. and other developed countries. They’re the only ones who make this call to say these specific guys should be removed. And this is not the first time it’s happened. If you remember Bernarditas Muller from Philippines, she doesn’t come from the Philippines badge anymore. Again, Philippines being under pressure not to have these people who know the convention, who know the rules, who know the history of these negotiations.
    http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/8/loss_and_damage_us_stymies_push

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    CheshireRed

    This is all jolly inconvenient to the ‘WAIS is melting and it’s CO2 wot done it’ crowd. Expect this definitive news to somehow sneak under the BBC & Guardian’s radar.

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    RoHa

    A giant blob of superheated rock ready to break out of Antarctica and rampage across the world?

    Now do you believe we’re doomed?

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    Ted O'Brien

    By the way.

    Waleed Aly has given Andrew Bolt a blast, published in the smh and elsewhere. So far as I know, Andrew Bolt is on holidays

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    pat

    ???

    9 Dec: CNBC: The US advantage at Paris climate talks
    by Gregory J. Pope and David S. Gee, Boston Consulting Group
    In the past, many in the U.S. have opposed such agreements because curbs on greenhouse gases would put U.S. businesses, especially manufacturers, at a disadvantage. That’s no longer the case. Recent advances in technology that have made the United States a global leader in low-cost, low-pollution energy stand this argument on its head. We can gain a relative competitive advantage if world leaders are able to negotiate a new global climate agreement
    Research we conducted with Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School found that reductions already are happening in a big way with the explosive growth of low cost unconventional natural gas and the scale-up of ever-more-competitive wind and solar power.
    The cost of natural gas, which is 50 percent cleaner than coal, has declined by 60 percent since 2009 and is now competitive with coal. Solar and wind are still generally more expensive than their fossil-fuel alternatives when subsidies are removed, but costs have declined by some 75 percent for solar and 50 percent for wind since 2009. Further reductions are likely…
    America’s unique competitive advantage in combating climate change comes primarily from the abundant reserves of low-cost natural gas we possess. While all countries are benefitting from the decline in the cost of renewables, the U.S. is way ahead of the rest of the world in developing new sources of low-cost clean-burning natural gas. This is a consequence of the unconventional, or “fracking,” revolution. Even with the global decline in oil and gas prices, domestic industrial natural gas prices are 50 percent to 70 percent lower than in Western Europe, Japan and other countries with which we compete; industrial electricity prices are 25 percent to 50 percent lower here…
    These advantages will persist over the next 10 to 20 years and they mean that no other country can make meaningful carbon reductions as cheaply as the U.S. Germany, for example, lacks low-cost gas and has spent over $400 billion in direct government subsidies to reduce carbon emissions since 2000. Yet residential electricity prices during this same period have nearly doubled…
    Thanks largely to the unconventional gas boom, the U.S. can reduce its carbon emissions in the near to mid-term far more economically than virtually any of our major trading partners. As a result, the U.S. participates in the Paris climate negotiations from a position of relative strength. That makes these talks very different – and creates an opportunity for a breakthrough agreement.
    http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/08/americas-competitive-advantage-at-the-paris-climate-talks.html

    from a Republican media research center – calling out the MSM CAGW zealots who pretend they are concerned for the poor, yet hide all inconvenient facts:

    8 Dec: Fox News: Julia A. Seymour: Paris climate summit: If liberal journos get their wish it may be lights out for billions
    Julia A. Seymour is the Assistant Managing Editor for MRC (Media Research Center) Business
    Heads of state are attempting, yet again, to reach a legally binding agreement for carbon dioxide emissions, even though satellite temperature records still show a pause in the warming trend. That pause began more than 18 years ago in 1997.
    The conference has no bigger supporters than the liberal media. Journalists have worked together with environmentalists to attack nearly every energy source we use. News outlets have targeted energy that provides more than 90 percent of U.S. power — oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and even hydroelectric.
    Meanwhile, they’ve helped promote renewable energy without concern for higher prices and ignored the fact that relying on them exclusively is more science fiction than science. Media have blasted coal as the “dirtiest fuel on earth,” while groups like the Sierra Club waged campaigns to move “Beyond Coal.” But journalists seldom focus on the flaws of the replacements they hype.
    Instead, we are bombarded with visions of apocalypse. Journalists repeatedly warn global warming will be “catastrophic.” They’ve regurgitated false claims about earth’s hottest years and protected climate alarmists from being discredited by scandal and failed climate models.
    It’s not a conspiracy but it might as well be one…
    But millions already die from direct consequences of life without electricity — the world the left and the media advocate.
    According to the International Energy Agency and World Health Organization, 4.3 million people die prematurely each year as a result of indoor air pollution from cooking with fuels like charcoal, wood or dung. They have no reliable alternative.
    Imagine needing critical medical attention in a country without reliable electricity. It’s a nightmare. Yet, more than 1 billion people around the world don’t have to imagine it. And journalists won’t tell their stories…
    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/12/08/paris-climate-summit-if-liberal-journos-get-their-wish-it-may-be-lights-out-for-billions.html

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    toorightmate

    I hope you all realize that this was cold rock until global warming came along.
    Tim Failerry will be spruiking this soon as a site for geothermal energy.

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    Eddie

    OT: Don’t miss Marc Morano being interviewed by John Cook. Full audio here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/09/debate-between-john-cook-and-marc-morano-in-paris/

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    Ruairi

    What can true science conclude,
    From all that Earth’s crust can exude,
    Forming miles underneath,
    The Antarctic sheet,
    Then up through volcanoes protrude?

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    el gordo

    Although its not spelt out in this abstract, clearly the end of glaciation (LGM) began in West Antarctica.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7463/full/nature12376.html

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    john karajas

    Once again geology trumps climate science over what really happens in Antarctica. Are you there Robyn Williams of “Our ABC”? What about some balanced science reporting for a change? While you are at it inform your drongo mate Tim Flannery as well. Useless wafflers!

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    Egor TheOne

    ‘Giant blob of superheated rock under West Antarctica’…The CAGW True B’lvers will flog this as the ‘missing heat’ that has some how migrated from the ‘deep oceans’ to under the Antarctic , will melt all the ice and we’re all dead …Game Over …..Whooops ! Better not give the Nutters ideas .

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    pat

    what are they afraid of?

    9 Dec: WaPo: Lisa Rein: Scientists keep rallying around NOAA chief in climate feud, telling her, ‘stay firm against bullying tactics’
    On Monday, the chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received a letter signed by 587 individual scientists from chemists to biologists urging to hold her ground against House science committee Chairman Lamar Smith’s campaign to discredit NOAA scientists. It follows a letter last month signed by seven scientific organizations representing hundreds of thousands of researchers warning that his efforts are “establishing a practice of inquests”that will have a chilling effect…
    “We urge you to continue to stand firm against these bullying tactics in order to protect NOAA scientists’ ability to pursue research and publish data and results regardless of how contentious the issue may be,” wrote the scientists, members of the Science Network of the Union of Concerned Scientists , a nonprofit science advocacy group.
    “Please continue to resist this dangerous abuse of congressional oversight power.”…
    Smith, in a statement, called the Union of Concerned Scientists a “left-wing environmental activist group” that “continues to misrepresent my efforts to hold federal government agencies accountable.”…
    Smith wrote Wednesday, “When a government employee’s salary is paid by taxpayers, they have an obligation to be open and honest…The American people have a right to see the data and know the motivations behind this study.”…
    “The Dark Ages seem to have returned,” wrote Kathryn Florio, a medical researcher in Sioux Falls, S.D. “Please remain strong; we’ve got your back.”…READ ALL
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/12/09/scientists-keep-rallying-around-noaa-chief-in-climate-feud-telling-her-stay-firm-against-bullying-tactics/

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      Graeme No.3

      Ah, but if a Democrat wants data (e.g. 10 years hotel receipts) the independent scientist has to bow down and comply instantly?

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  • #

    “Of course, just because the parts of Antarctica that are warming are near or over this hot blob does not mean it’s causing the melting. It could be a coincidence. ; -)”

    No Jo, it’s not a coincidence – that’s where the MISSING HEAT is hiding!

    😉 of course.

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  • #
    Oblivious

    It is obvious
    Just like a layer of snow insulates a house roof, there is a hot spot because all the snow and ice insulates the rock under West Antarctica. Hence it is 4 times hotter than elsewhere and causing the ice to melt.

    :-J

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    Felix

    Antarctic glaciers lose mass along the edges as glacier slide into the sea. This mass loss rate has increased due to warmer ocean temps. At the same time snow in the interior has increased, but most of the research says there is a net loss of ice.

    The hot plume from the mantle, if indeed there is one, has been there for centuries and cannot be the cause in the recent changes is glacier ice mass. The surface warmth may effect the rate at which glaciers slide now that the ice now that the edges are melting faster, but this is not well understood yet.

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    • #

      Felix,

      Whenever I see the phrase, “but most of the research says”, it’s a sure bet that most of the research cited is wrong and as usual, ‘most’ in the context of climate research fails to include any contraindicative work.

      Whether or not there has been any recent unusual change is hard to tell since we only have accurate measurements for a short period of time and sporadic subjective accounts going back a little further. The null hypothesis is that if there was no prior melting, the hot spot got a little closer to the surface and melting increased or that there was prior melting and we just didn’t notice. Hot spots melting ice and snow is not unusual and is something I see all the time at Mammoth Mountain, albeit at a smaller scale.

      Just because our technology notices something now, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been there all along, yet climate science by default considers any change must be the result of CO2 and they concentrate on looking for tiny changes where the data is far from sufficient to differentiate a new change from something we just hadn’t noticed yet.

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      Robk

      Comming out of an ice age, there is a net loss of ice. Not so more recently(see Nasa press). The hot plume was likely the one causing the clusters of volcanoes, some dormant, some not. It’s age is likely way older than the last ice age or the one before that but the fluctuating pressures due to the ice could conceivably affect the pressure on the venting of the plume. These things happen on the scale of millennia. Much of the central rift is upto 1.5km below sea level so glacial flow is skating over ice not land in places. An incremental increase in ocean temp over a few decades won’t do much.

      20

    • #
      Andrew McRae

      There is a recurring natural cycle in ocean temperature, see Bruce of Newcastle comment at #19.

      20

      • #
        Robk

        The sixty year cycle maybe what NASA is seeing with the edges of the ice fluctuating but the ice age cycle would have more effect on the mass of ice compression on the continent. I’d expect 60 years is a mere blink of an eye compared to the clusters of volcanism and rift valley formation. The observation that west Antarctica is different goes back to our first observations. I expect it’s always (long time) been so.

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          Fair enough. Maybe you can hazard a guess to my question at #12.3 about ice contact.
          Typical geothermal flux IIRC is 300mW/m^2. So even at 1.2W/m2 this is quite tiny for ice that is below 0C. How does it become significant ? Just long integration time will do it I guess?

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          • #
            Robk

            Sorry Andrew, I skipped #12 as it went off on a tangent. I doubt there is a huge effect except when large seismic events occur. There would be a slight increase in thermal gradient and perhaps better coupling of the ice melted under the heat and pressure. There may well be some measurable effect with very precise thermometers which I’m guessing might explain the thermal image above, but I doubt it would make a big impact on the overall energy deficit of the main ice mass.I expect the west is different to the rest of the continent largely because the vulcanism but the oceans certainly shift more heat around.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      Only one problem with that. The Southern Oceans are COOLING !!

      https://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/14-southern-ssta.png

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      • #
        Robk

        And the ice is increasing. As indicated above there is a 60 year cycle which appears to have peaked.

        11

        • #
          Robk

          To put it another way: the 60 year cycle trims the edges. The ice age cycle may influence the plume vents causing clusters of vents in different directions and perhaps influencing the rift and adding a little heat under the ice over a much longer cycle.

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    Frigid Lank

    This follows on the heels of NASA’s recent backtrack…. “Scientists have previously wrongly attributed gains in elevations in East Antarctica to recent snowfall. The NASA team used data dating back to 1979 to prove the ice cores in the area had in fact been thickening.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/11970682/NASA-reveals-that-Antarctica-is-actually-gaining-ice.html

    When will the press start fully reporting on these ‘mistakes’ and ‘overlooks’ which make an important case against the fear of CO2?

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    This imagined blob “is not”! This can only be fantasy via computer simulation. Philosophically all fantasy, or conjecture must be real! Philosophy acknowledges both measurable and ‘concept’ as real. How else can concept ever “be”?

    However proper science distinguishes the ‘concept’ from the ‘physical’ by the process of measurement! How is your blob measured to become part of ‘is’ rather than ‘fantasy’?

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      Robk

      Will, I thick it’s the sensory art of tomography, but I’m sure you know that.

      10

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      ianl8888

      Airborne geophysics is a well-accepted method of 2nd degree geological exploration. Of course the results need hard definitive evidence (one could drill, but a 60 mile deep hole is quite a challenge in the Antarctic). Nonetheless, the geophysics results are indicating a sizeable anomaly, imaged off a 3D, airborne observation grid

      The volcanic chain is also well mapped on the surface, with volcanically warmed lakes acting as tourist attractions in the midst of snow, ice and glaciation

      If you don’t actually know that, you diminish your credibility. If you do know it but preferred to pretend you didn’t, you diminish your honesty

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      Brian H

      Blobometrics.

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    pat

    what happened to consensus?

    Tweet by Simon Evans, Carbonbrief:
    On current draft, Paris climate deal would enter force once 50 or 60 Parties sign up. EU alone is 29…
    Article 18 (ENTRY INTO FORCE)
    This Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the date on which at least [50/60] Parties to the Convention have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession [but not earlier than 1 January 2020].
    https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/status/674602865726386176

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    pat

    top story on ReutersCP today, written again by all their big hitters, because trading carbon dioxide emissions is the only game…all the rest is window-dressing:

    9 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: New Paris text keeps markets in view but flags raised, changes expected
    By Ben Garside, Stian Reklev and Mike Szabo
    The draft Paris Agreement text released Wednesday afternoon potentially paves the way for a new international carbon market, but remained heavily bracketed and included wording that experts say may be problematic for some parties.
    Published amid intensifying negotiations, the text included provisions for the “international transfer of mitigation outcomes”, UNFCCC language for carbon markets, but the whole paragraph on ‘cooperative approaches’ was bracketed, meaning it had not been agreed…READ ALL
    http://carbon-pulse.com/13125/

    Oreskes is with the program:

    1 Dec: Scientific American: Naomi Oreskes: Without Government, the Marketplace Will Not Solve Climate Change
    A carbon tax, or emissions-trading system, could slow climate change, but government is needed to create those systems…
    The rejection of climate action is largely based on suspicion of big government, and an international treaty is government at its biggest. Yet making a substantial impact on something so fundamental as the sources of energy that drive our civilization is going to require billions (if not trillions) of dollars of investments and incentives that span diverse industries—the kinds of actions that the private sector has historically not made…
    Opponents of an international treaty on climate change have allowed their hostility to government not only to lead them to deny the facts of climate change but also to spill over into conspiratorial thinking…
    The idea of being able to buy the right to pollute offends many people, but properly implemented, emissions trading can work…
    Many business leaders prefer emissions trading over taxation because once the system is in place, it enables a good deal of freedom and flexibility…
    To create the backbone of a new energy system, we need large-scale renewable power ETC…AL GORE, THE POPE…ETC
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/without-government-the-marketplace-will-not-solve-climate-change/

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    pat

    can’t make head or tails of Sophie’s maths:

    9 Dec: CarbonBrief: Sophie Yeo: Analysis: Developing countries need $3.5 trillion* to implement climate pledges by 2030
    Carbon Brief analysis shows that developing countries need around $3.5tn to implement their UN climate pledges up to 2030. (*Caution: important caveats apply to this headline total. See below.)
    The costs — or “investments”, as some might call it — described in INDCs add up to $3.5tn. From this, $2.5tn has been requested by India alone. The remaining $1tn is made up of financial estimates submitted by 72 other developing countries in their INDCs. (For clarity, by trillion we mean a million million, or 1,000 billion.)…
    From this $3.5tn total, $420bn is explicitly requested to come from international sources of finance, including public money, private investments and carbon markets. Meanwhile, developing countries have pledged to spend $81bn from their domestic budgets…
    Both of these figures cover the period up to 2030. This averages out to requirements of around $42bn a year of international funding between 2020 and 2030…
    Carbon Brief’s figure may only be a snapshot, based on limited figures from the early stages of the progress, but it is a sign of how climate finance might need to be pieced together over the coming decade and beyond.
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-developing-countries-need-3-5-trillion-to-implement-climate-pledges-by-2030?utm_content=buffer44a57&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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    pat

    Mann appeals ***nationalism!

    8 Dec: NYT: Michael E. Mann: The Assault on Climate Science
    Certainly, as the chairman of a congressional committee, Mr. Smith is entitled to all of the data behind the study so he can fulfill his oversight role in determining, as he put it in one letter to the agency, “the quality of the analysis and decision-making.”
    At the same time, as NOAA noted, the confidentiality of communications between scientists is “essential to frank discourse.” For that reason, the agency rejected his demand…
    While there is no doubt climate change is real and caused by humans, there is absolutely a debate to be had about the details of climate policy, and there are prominent Republicans participating constructively in that discourse. Let’s hear more from these sensible voices. And let’s end the McCarthy-like assault on science led by the Lamar Smiths of the world.
    ***Our nation is better than that.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/opinion/the-assault-on-climate-science.html?_r=0

    9 Dec: Reuters: Nichola Groom: U.S. solar industry battles ‘white privilege’ image problem
    Additional reporting by Richard Valdmanis in Paris
    Though it has grown dramatically in recent years, solar power still makes up less than 1 percent of U.S. energy supplies and relies heavily on government incentives to compete with traditional energy sources…
    “No one needs solar on their home if their bill is not more than $150 a month,” said Steven Bradford, a California Democrat who until last year was a state assembly member for an ethnically diverse district in the Los Angeles area and is now running for the state Senate. “Low income folks in a 900 square foot (83.6 square meter) home or apartment are not the perfect candidates for it.”…
    Now companies are trying to tap the lower-income segment.
    They have gradually lowered the credit score requirement for the financing of solar panels and are rolling out projects that allow solar installations to be shared by groups of households or used in subsidized housing complexes…
    This year California passed a law, which the solar industry and environmental groups lobbied hard for, that will allow the state to use up to $1 billion of the money from its greenhouse gas emissions trading program to install solar power on affordable housing projects over the next decade.
    ***”That’s a real market,” said Rive, adding that SolarCity could eventually create an investment fund dedicated to affordable housing…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-solar-minorities-insight-idUSKBN0TS0G220151209

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    pat

    meant to type:

    Mann appeals to ***nationalism! (I omitted the “to”)

    10

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    Ross

    O/T but this needs highlighting in neon lights

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/09/why-bother-john-kerry-admits-american-co2-cuts-would-be-pointless/

    Are some of these politicians putting their hands up and saying “I give up” ??

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    pat

    ***insanity:

    10 Dec: The Conversation: How 1.5 became the most important number at the Paris climate talks
    by Kate Dooley, PhD candidate, Australian German Climate & Energy College, University of Melbourne and
    Doreen Stabinsky, Professor of Global Environmental Politics, College of the Atlantic
    Many industrialised countries have surprised the world at the talks with a new-found fondness for 1.5℃…
    ***What does staying below 1.5℃ mean in practice? Nothing less than full decarbonisation of the global economy by 2050. We must stop burning all fossil fuels before the middle of the century, along with a massive effort to keep forests standing and protect biodiversity. That is no small feat…
    https://theconversation.com/how-1-5-became-the-most-important-number-at-the-paris-climate-talks-51960

    Parkinson said virtually all the following today on ABC’s The World Today:

    10 Dec: RenewEconomy: Giles Parkinson: Paris, COP21: Negotiating blocks fracture in push for high ambition
    In what may be one of the most significant developments ever seen in the 21-year history of the UN climate negotiations, a new coalition has emerged that combines the US, European nations, oil producers and vulnerable nations pushing for an ambitious outcome to the talks.
    The new grouping, called the Coalition for Ambition, has pulled in support from more than 100 countries with a range of economic drivers and motivations…
    China, facing crippling pollution at home, is prepared for a deal. India, seeking rapid growth, is playing hardball. The OPEC countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, are trying to dilute the target…
    Ambition is about whether the agreement targets “below 2°C, “well below 2°C, or 1.5°C, or includes 1.5°C as a reference that could be scaled up as a target at a later date.”
    It also includes language around decarbonisation, or carbon neutrality, and over what period – by 2050, in the second half of the century, or by 2100. Australia is comfortable with the term decarbonisation, but not anytime soon…
    The grouping aims to tighten and control rules on international carbon permits, now generally accepted as crucial to the task of meeting the target of capping the rise in temperatures to less than 2°C.
    But Bishop said this does not signal an about-face on domestic markets.
    “It is just a declaration,” she said. “It is not legally binding. It is signaling our commitment to work with others on a carbon market post 2020.”…
    Two years ago, soon after Tony Abbott was appointed prime minister and ordered a switch in negotiating stance, Australia was awarded numerous “fossil of the day” awards from environmental NGOs.
    On Wednesday, it won its first of this COP, for the coal speech delivered by Bishop the day before.
    Australia shared the award with Argentina, which is also talking up new coal projects.
    http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/paris-cop21-negotiating-blocks-fracture-in-push-for-high-ambition-94801

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    pat

    9 Dec: BBC: Matt McGrath: COP21: Cardinal says birth control may offer climate ‘solution’
    In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Cardinal Turkson suggested that birth control could help alleviate some of the impacts of climate change, particularly the lack of food in a warmer world.
    “This has been talked about, and the Holy Father on his trip back from the Philippines also invited people to some form of birth control, because the church has never been against birth control and people spacing out births and all of that. So yes, it can offer a solution,” he said…
    “So yes it engages us in food security management, so we ensure that everybody is fed and all of that. The amount of population that is critical for the realisation of this is still something we need to discover, yet the Holy Father has also called for a certain amount of control of birth.”
    Cardinal Turkson was at pains to stress that artificial birth control methods such as the contraceptive pill were still beyond the pale as far as the Church was concerned.
    “You don’t deal with one good with another evil: the Church wants people to be fed, so let’s do what the Church feels is not right? That is a kind of sophistry that the church would not go for,” he said…
    The issue is especially controversial in relation to climate change. The global population of 7 billion people is expected to grow to 9.7bn by the middle of the century according to the UN. However, efforts to limit family size in developing countries have been criticised as a form of imperialism…
    …Cardinal Turkson said a strong agreement at the Paris climate talks would be critically important in tackling the causes of the problem…
    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35040477

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    I find the article at sciencedaily.com badly needs more maps and diagrams to explain what th’ they have found and what exactly they are talking and speculating about. Tried google – This 4Mb pdf has stacks of maps – vastly clearer now.
    [PDF]The Structure and Seismicity of West Antarctica and …
    https://www.waisworkshop.org/sites/waisworkshop.org/…/Wiens.pdf
    The above findings are refining what was published in 2004 see this 500Kb pdf
    [PDF]Crustal structure of the West Antarctic rift system and Marie …
    http://www.geology.cwu.edu/facstaff/winberry/myweb/j…/winanangeology.pd..

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    Eugene WR Gallun

    The core of the earth is hot because it is filled with CO2. (Millions of
    degrees hot as Al Gore has told us. What else is powerful enough to create
    that type of heat?) C02 is melting Antarctica from both top and bottom.

    Eugene WR Gallun

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    Steve McIntyre has a characteristically thorough first look at ice-mass loss in the Antarctic Peninsula –

    http://climateaudit.org/2015/12/02/antarctic-ice-mass-controversies/

    He’s not going to be drawn on the likelihood of a significant geothermal component, and my reading is he doesn’t think it necessary to introduce such speculation. Very interesting discussion on the difficulties of calculating just how much ice is entering or leaving the scene, both in East and West Antarctica. Take a look.

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    a geologist

    Hard to attribute melting of an ice cap to a thermal plume and rift volcanism, except very locally. For comparison, the Vatna glacier in Iceland covers 8,000 square kilometres and lies directly over the Iceland mantle plume. Sorry, nice theory but I can’t buy into it geologically.

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    Roy Hogue

    Giant blob of superheated rock under West Antarctica

    I guess we all need to learn our elbow from a hot rock then.

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      Roy Hogue

      If you saw the 1964 movie, The Magnificent Seven, you’ll remember that, elbow from a hot rock, substitute for another, know your this from your that expression that the censors in Hollywood would have frowned on, not to mention the audiences of the day.

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        Roy Hogue

        Ain’t geology fun? 😉

        When I studied it years ago I never dreamed that world politics would in any way involve something hot under the Earth’s crust. It was just a fact and was so obviously true because there are volcanoes all over the world.

        But let’s face it. Now a hot rock under Antarctica is a political matter, no longer permitted to remain in the realm of geology. It’s a shame that we’ve come to this. It’s really not a matter of concern, except maybe curiosity for nearly everyone on the planet. And even for the geologists, it’s importance is really only academic. Nuts 🙁

        But let’s have as much fun with this as we can. There’s little else we can do but document it and have fun. 🙂

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    When you are a Warmista, every phenomenon that you can see, turns out to be actually caused by CO2. As a Warmista you never need to look for the real cause of anything (drought, famine, Jihadism, Volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.) as you already know that they are all caused by CO2.
    All Warmistas know that even a line of hot rocks and volcanoes under West Antarctica would have absolutely no effect on the peninsula compared to the mighty effects of CO2.
    All this knowledge is written in the Great Book of Warmism which contains all knowledge of Science and forms the Holy Book of Warmism-the-Religion.

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    Wayne Job

    Answers to the hot rocks are not possible until the right questions are asked. Firstly after 4.5 billion years why is the core still molten. Secondly why do volcanoes which are a ball of molten activity not connected to the molten core not only happen but sometimes explode violently. Thirdly Why when the real answers have been known for a long time, do those in the earth sciences fail to ask the right questions. Strange world we live in, the book 1984 comes to mind.

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    Just think about how effective and artistically aesthetic USSR propaganda was between 1917 and 1945, and then think about the color red being replaced by the color green:
    Soviet Propaganda Art 1917-1945
    … then think about how effective, and how much money has been spent, on the climate alarmist propaganda since the 80’s: Billions upon billions.

    If ‘Big Oil’ is funding some kind of a ‘denier’ propaganda war, I fail to see where it is manifesting on the marketing landscape. The only finely constructed propaganda I can ever identify about the climate –PERIOD– is highly calculated pro-alarmist propaganda art, and of course now try-hard-satire music videos, like the one displayed on this post.

    All of the ‘denier propaganda’ for the most part, is simply web blogs and grass roots outreach, whereas the alarmists seem to be the only ones with paid marketing managers, and a seemingly endless budget to grease the advertising wheels of press and media firms who rely on clients who want to spend big. I wonder why most of the press and media are pro-alarmi$t?

    WHERE’S ALL THEIR MONEY COMING FROM? Could it be big monopoly capitalists and high net worth individuals such as Lord Blood and Al Gore, David Mayer de Rothschild from Live Earth fame, and the Rockefeller family of UN & Standard Oil fame (newly divested and hedged)?

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    Rosco

    El-Nino events and the north Pacific blob originate along the World’s most active volcanic region – the eastern Pacific “portion of the “Ring of Fire”.

    The warmed water spreads west from its origin off the western coast of the Americas.

    Given that we know volcanic activity builds up as pressure and then declines as the pressure is released as an eruption why is it so improbable that the most significant climate event, the El-Nino/La-Nina cycle could be explained by underwater volcanic activity ?

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