WOA, what you are saying tends to support what I said, not contradict it. Trends are virtually meaningless over the short-term. The GRACE project hasn't been going long enough to establish any trends. But there is more than that.

The highest temperature for the last 10 was 1998. That is the peak so far, and peaks are by definition "abnormally hot". I can't see how you can say it has got hotter since then, particularly as last year was only the sixth hottest of the last decade.

So the GRACE project has been going for half the last decade during which period there has been no increase in global temperature. The question I was posing was why would there be an increase in melting in only the last year and a half due to global warming when there has been no global warming?

You provide a hypothesis that it is due to Greenland being hotter. Well, that was one of my hypotheses - regional climate variation. The temperature graph you refer to shows it actually hotter on average in the first three years of the GRACE project, when melt was slower, than the last two years, when it was faster. So, I'm not sure that this is a satisfactory hypothesis.

Which means either that the hypothesis needs some more elaboration, or something else is at work. I chose the example of Mt Killimanjaro because it's one that Al Gore got wrong according to a court of law. It's immaterial where it is situated, what is material is that it's not high temperature that is causing it to disappear, but the fact that ice is being lost faster than it is being replenished. Seems reasonable that a similar mechanism could apply in the case of Greenland.

I don't know what the answer is, I am critically examining the argument that it has been caused by global warming. I am more than prepared to accept an explanation which shows it is caused by global warming, if the explanation stands-up. But I'm not prepared to go along with every beat-up.

I do not understand the basis for your post, Wizofaus.

There has been no warming in the southern hemisphere since 1979.

The recent correction by Hansen, to the NASA figures, show 1934 as the hottest year in the US.

We do not know what the Chinese figures are, because Dr Wang who supplied them, admitted to fraud, and no authentic replacement figures have been put forward.

If there has been warming, it is on less than half of the globe, so it should not be described as global warming.

Claiming an upward trend is meaningless. There has been no hotter year since 1998. If anything the years have been cooler since then.

On what basis do you say it is untrue that there has been no global warming since 1998 at the latest, apart from your so called “trend”, which is highly debatable?

Graham, I don't pretend to be a climate scientist, but I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect that there would be something of a delay between the actual measured hottest years and the rate of glacial retreat and ice sheet melt. If it were true that 2002- 03 were the hottest years on record for the region around Greenland, then it wouldn't particularly surprise me that the melt rate reacted to it a year or so later. At any rate, most climate science works entirely on the decadal level - while it would be a little unusual to see cooling over the period of a decade, it's not enough on its own to change the decadal trend.

Nick, it's definitely the case that the temperature trend has not shown a particular trend in the Southern Hemisphere over the last ~10 years (though where you get 1979 from I've no idea - http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif quite clearly shows SH warming from about 1950 to 2000), but this only barely damps the very pronounced trend in the northern hemisphere. Nobody is claiming global warming means that every part of the globe is warming simultaneously. There are well-understand reasons why the northern hemisphere is warming faster (primarily the land:sea ratio), and the trend in the southern hemisphere since 1998 is well within the expected range of temperatures as predicted by models.

WoA, I don't understand why you would expect a delay in the receipt of heat and its effect in the case of ice. There's no convection to take energy deep down below the surface, and energy transfer between the surface and below is limited until ice turns into water.

But if there is some residual heat in the ice which jackpots, that wouldn't suggest an unanticipated acceleration, it would suggest that melt has been held back and only looks like it is accelerating. The issue isn't whether ice is melting, but whether somehow things have accelerated beyond what we thought. So far, I haven't seen any evidence of that.

Now I'm really laughing.

Wizofaus,

Graham states he "doesn't know what the answer is", he claims to critically examine the arguments then hypothesises nonsense that he can't test ... then asserts at every corner the "explanations" by the scientists themselves are a "beat-up".

Well, it sounds as if he doesn't want the science to get in the way of his nonsense.

Wiz, why do you really think we are "debating" the complexities of the science ... on OLO for God's sake? (Hint: it's not all about GY's altruism).

Our moderator now appears no different to KAEP (who is going to report back no less!) ... and you expect some kind of responsibility from the moderator in techno-babble?

With the utmost respect, let Graham and all the other wanabes hypothesise all they want ... if you fall for the bait, you are as much a fool as they.

Nick, you haven't got a clue ... go back to elementary and learn something amount trend analysis *before* you make such stupid remarks. Seriously, talk to your local high school maths teacher.

GrahamY and the denier or “I don’t know” brigade has difficulty communicating with real scientists.

May I suggest the recalcitrant fire-off their concerns, fears and hypotheses (go GraY, go KAEP) to Andrew Dessler, he is a professor in the Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on the physics of climate change, in particular, climate feedbacks.

Andrew has also spent some time as a Senior Policy Analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Some of you may find the dialogue particularly rewarding (but maybe not) as the Professor has written a book;

The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the debate.

In this respect, GrahamY is half right, about the politics bit anyway.

Andrew’s email: adessler@tamu.edu

Or his Website:

http://www.met.tamu.edu/people/faculty/dessler.php

Anyway, back to OLO.
Andrew was supposed to debate climate change a few days ago with Tim Ball, a very well known global warming sceptic as I am sure all in the denier camp knows. Well, the Ball didn’t turn up to play.

Below is a link to the game. It kind of reminds me about this OLO thread – there really is no point in wasting time and effort in discussion with the hard-line deniers or feeble of mind, as I have said here before.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/17/231612/94

I’m off for a while, doing the Chrissy thing. Regardless of our differences, I wish you all a happy one.