Nope This graph is of sea ice and it freezes up each year and is not related to precipitation (and you are correct, precipitation in Antarctica is expected to have a slightly negative impact on sea level (as it always has had)). Like the Arctic, the amount of sea ice around Antarctica is an indirect measure of a combination of ocean currents, wind patterns, amount of cloud cover and air temperature. It is not a good measure of climate change since as we see, even though we know that global temps are going up, so is Antarctic sea ice. Arthur
So we read that the amount of Antarctic sea ice meaures long term and large scale changes in significant weather patterns at high Southern latitudes, but not climate change. Got it.
Correct. Since we have the level of sea ice going up on one pole and down on the other it's clear that sea ice it is not a good indicator of global climate change.
There's a kind of beauty in this, no? We aren't just talking about doubt concerning some physical stuff that may or may not be happening, here. We're dealing with denial of scientific reasoning itself, a refusal to acknowledge pattern and consequence. Meanwhile, the OP remains bereft of commentary. What if anything have we lost if we lose the whitebark pine forests, but still have a few patches of whitebark pine trees around? lose the coral reefs but still have some patches of coral here and there? Is there a definable type of extinction at the level of "biome" or "ecosystem" or the like, that we can measure and track and record as data?
No one has doubted that the Whitepine is declining. NO ONE. You just wanted to try to claim that their decline over this century was due to climate change when the science said the major reasons for the decline were not related to climate but to beetles, fungus and fire management. The cumulative effects of these three agents have resulted in a rapid decrease in mature whitebark pine over the last 20 years. Then they add a note about the possible effects of climate change that have yet to occur: Arthur
