So where did the Nature paper go wrong?
The short answer is that I don’t know … but I don’t believe their results. The paper is very detailed, in particular the Supplementary Online Information (SOI). It all seems well thought out and investigated … but I don’t believe their results. They have noted and discussed various sources of error. They have compared the use of Secchi disks as a proxy, and covered most of the ground clearly … and I still don’t believe their results.
The Green Lobbyists Who Cleared 'Climategate' Academics
Jason Lewis,
The Sunday Telegraph
A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC.
The little-known not-for-profit company works behind the scenes at international conferences to further its aims.
One of its key supporters headed the official investigation into the so-called "Climategate emails", producing a report which cleared experts of deliberately attempting to skew scientific results to confirm that global warming was a real threat.
Antarctica Gains Ice From The Bottom Up
Submitted by Doug L. Hoffman
, The Resilient Earth
Scientists have always thought that the vast majority of ice contained in the Antarctic ice cap was formed from frozen precipitation. Recent research has revealed that this is not totally correct. Over a large fraction of East Antarctica, the deepest part of the ice sheet contains ice that did not originate as surface snow but developed when subglacial meltwater was frozen onto the underside of the ice sheet. The amount of ice involved is much larger than the estimated volume of Antarctic subglacial lakes and may even exceed the volume of all glaciers on Earth outside of the two polar ice sheets. Current computer models predict that subglacial water escapes toward the ocean. These new findings indicate that water from areas of basal melting actually migrate to areas of basal freezing, something not accounted for by current ice sheet models. To scientists' surprise, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is getting thicker from the bottom up.
According to a Science report published online March 3, 2011, by Robin E. Bell et al., little is known about processes at the base of the ice sheets. In “Widespread Persistent Thickening of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet by Freezing from the Base,” researchers report that, although the surface accumulation of snow remains the primary mechanism for ice sheet growth, beneath the research site known as Dome A, 24% of the base by area is frozen-on ice. In some places, up to half of the ice thickness has been added from below. The unexpected thickness of these bottom layers of ice was detected using radar imaging during the International Polar Year 2007–2009.
The exact mechanisms for the formation of this refrozen ice depends on the location. According to Bell et al., the freeze-on at valley heads is primarily the result of conductive cooling over static bodies of water. Along the valley walls, ice is primarily the result of the hydrologic potential forcing water up steep valley slopes. But these processes are not mutually exclusive: individual packages of frozen-on ice could well have been produced by a combination of the two mechanisms. The authors speculate that the creation of bottom ice is widespread and has been going on since the beginning of persistent glaciation more than 30 million years ago.
