The CNN article contains the following statement: Dr Hansen told CNN: “In the paleoclimate data, the Cenozoic data is the most alarming — burning all the fossil fuels clearly would send the planet back to the ice-free state with sea level about 250 feet higher.”

If only the media was a watch dog, not a lap dog.

Keep up the good work

Climate scientists now argue that by “polar amplification” they really only meant the North Pole. The South Pole is different, say some scientists (and several comm enters on this blog) because the larger ocean extent in the Southern Hemisphere has always made it less susceptible ot temperature variations: your characterisation of what climate scientists now argue is way off. Models which run to equilibrium give roughly equal amplification at both poles. Transient models (more resource intensive and thus later to arrive on the scene) show that the north pole is expected to warm much sooner than the south pole, in response to a forcing. There has been no U-turn such as you imply.

If polar amplification were occurring and the explanation for the North Pole warming more than the rest of the Earth (by far) over the last 30 years, shouldn’t I see it in the seasonal data. I am honestly curious, and would like comments.: seems to me quite plausible that the increasing summer melt would tend to lead to summer temperatures rising quicker than winter temperatures. But increasing CO2 normally leads to winter temperatures rising more rapidly than summer temperatures – something that is clearly observed in the rest of the world. So, perhaps in the Arctic the two effects are more or less cancelling each other out.

Given that this was written in 2004, he means restricted to 1984-2004. Unlike global warming?: yes, unlike global warming. That has been observed for a much longer period.

By the way, he would see it for much longer than 20 years if these NASA scientists were not so hostile to space technologies (ie satellite measurement): this statement makes no sense.

wouldn’t life be so much better at NASA without satellites? – again, bizarre comment. What do you mean?

This is roughly what one would predict from CO2 global warming (or other natural forcings, by the way). The most warming is in the winter: you wouldn’t expect that from an increase in solar radiation.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0612/0612145v1.pdf

In general, more cosmic rays lead to more clouds, and the earth general gets cooler. Fewer cosmic rays leads to less cloudiness, and the earth gets warmer.

Antarctica’s ice cap has a very high albedo. When the earth as a whole gets warmer, that icecap becomes cloud free, and reflects away more sunlight, and becomes cooler. When the earth as a whole gets cooler, Antarctica gets warmer. There are more clouds over Antarctica, which have a lower albedo than the icecap, and also trap heat radiated from the surface.