In terms of potential harm to the planet, these so-called “experts” (often with no direct knowledge of how the weather is supposed to behave or how far off kilter things have gotten these days) are sometimes as bad for the planet as outright deniers…
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Hot-weather-impacting-climbing-on-Mount-Rainier-314329081.html
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. (AP) – Seattleites without air conditioning aren’t the only ones suffering from record-setting temperatures this summer.
The glacier-covered faces of Mount Rainier are melting faster than usual this year, creating conditions on the mountain more like August or September just a few days into July….
Things have been looking different for the last 40 years, at least, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report that found Mount Rainier glaciers had lost 14 percent of their volume from 1970 to 2008.
But while global warming is fingered for shrinking glaciers, it may not be behind the most recent hot weather, according to University of Washington atmospheric science professor Cliff Mass.
Mass said the warmer weather over roughly the last year – and especially the last few weeks – is so out of the ordinary that it can only be attributed to natural variations in weather.
“If you have a very, very extreme situation, global warming can’t be the cause of most of it,” Mass said. “Global warming isn’t large enough to be the cause of it.”
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Also see:
No, Arctic sea ice is not going to be okay
One of the most obvious effects of global climate change is that it’s causing ice to melt all over the world, especially at the planet’s frozen poles. Ice losses have been observed for years now in glaciers and ice sheets, as well as in Arctic sea ice — the ice that floats on top of the ocean. In a confusing twist, though, new research published Monday is showing that there was a large increase in Arctic sea ice in 2013, rather than a decrease.
It’s just the kind of news often seized upon by climate skeptics as a way to undermine the concept of anthropogenic global warming. However, making sense of these observations requires a deeper understanding of long-term trends in sea ice and the factors that affect it from one year to the next.
Overall, Arctic sea ice has experienced a decreasing trend since the 1970s — however, its extent still fluctuates slightly from one year to the next depending on local climate-related conditions, sometimes increasing a bit from one year to the next, and other times decreasing. Despite these little annual fluctuations, the overall trend observed for decades now still shows that we’re losing ice in the long term.
Exposing the Big Game 