Giant iceberg spotted off Australia, page 2

Originally posted by Curious and Concerned

Originally posted by captaintyinknots
Also, global warming isnt a fraud, it is fact. FACT is that the average temp of this planet has risen over the last decade.

The only debate is over the cause.

Not neccessarily. Some data sets have shown a cooling trend during the last decade...

And some data sets may have shown a slight warming but pretty much flat through out the last decade. Whichever data sets you look at though, we haven't got any warmer since the 1998 peak. So saying that warming over the last decade as "FACT" is a little misleading.

As far as the OP goes, this is certainly nothing remarkable or unprecedented. A few years ago in 2006 we had a large iceberg visible off the coast of New Zealand (where I call home ).

Iceberg off New Zealand becomes tourist mecca

This iceberg became a tourist attraction, with people flying out to it and landing on it in helicopters. Quite a novelty, really.

I'd also just like to point out an error in the news report from the above link. Upon reading I noticed this. This is the opening paragraph.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - An iceberg has been spotted from the New Zealand shore for the first time in living memory, drawing tourists via helicopter and scientists who are trying to determine where it and several other giant chunks drifting in the country's waters originated from.

Then it goes on to say...

Williams said the last time an iceberg was visible from the New Zealand shore was June 1931.

I guess they don't classify 1931 as within living memory. But the article does mention that scientists say it is impossible to attribute the iceberg to global warming.

So this recent iceberg is barely half way to the position of the iceberg from 06, but I can just see it being attributed to global warming by some.

Your chart there has the name "Joe D'Aleo" on it. He's the founder of The Weather Channel and a well-known biased skeptic of man-made global warming. He really hasn't many credentials on the subject of climate. Especially since he studied local WEATHER more than global CLIMATE (as a climatologist would). They're two different animals. D'Aleo is essentially a rich news weather-man.

Here's some actual scientific data from NASA GISS:

According to the vast majority of scientists who actually study global climate, the past decade was the warmest on record. It is an indisputed FACT, so captaintyinknots was correct. And 2005 is now the warmest year on record globally, with 2007 in contention with 1998 for runner-up. Globally the top ten hottest years on record have ALL been within the past decade:
data.giss.nasa.gov...

And I see you've reposted this in other threads so I'm gonna repost my other response like a smartass

:

Well, you'd have to be over 80 years old to have witnessed the last iceberg... so for the vast majority of people, it's not living memory. But yeah, someone in NZ might be alive that saw it...

This iceberg can definitely be attributed to global warming. The warming of the Arctic/Antarctic ice caps is accelerated more than the rest of the world. This points directly to a greenhouse effect rather than any kind of solar output or other natural cycle. The source of these recent icebergs was a large shelf breaking off of Antarctica in 2000-2002. That was a HUGE ice shelf, and those things don't just break off without something like global warming to give em a nice hefty push into the ocean.