Anthony Watts: it is necessary to use the correct sea-ice graphs on WUWT to avoid misleading the public

This is how you do denial and flagrantly cherry pick data.

Here is a graph Anthony Watts @ Watts Up With That? (WUWT) elects to use from the National Ice and Snow Data Center:

Notice anything? Anything missing? Anyone?

Would that be the standard deviations (SDs)? 

If you remove that pesky piece of information that indicates that sea-ice decline is below average you remove the problem!

Until 2009 the NSIDC used to present the graph without the SDs (hat tip A.Watts!).

If the NSIDC has elected to present information in one format as their preferred means of communication, it is beholden to all of us to follow their model.

That is a reasonable assumption to make. If Mr. Watts is aware they changed this back in 2009, surely his blog needs to mimic their current practice?

Mr. Watts accused me of lacking professionalism. Over to you now Anthony regarding the question of professionalism.

Context matters

If the NSIDC elect to give prominence to the presentation of data in one format it is reasonable to assume we are all beholden to follow their lead.

You could claim they presented their data as such four years ago.

But not now:

Notice anything?

The graph includes the SDs. If you go to their Sea Ice page you’ll see graphs that us the SDs.

So why does this matter?

Because the context in which information is presented matters a great deal in this debate.

And when you exclude something, it is because you may not want it to be seen.

Now it could very well be that Mr. Watts simply needs to bring his images inline with the practices of the NSIDC – if that is the case the opportunity now exits.

We can take data and images from anywhere – from NSIDC, from a government website or the Bureau of Meteorology and present it however we wish.

But what matters more: the thin slice of data you wish to highlight, of the full data set and the contextual information?

Excluding standard deviations in sea-ice graphs @ WUWT: why it matters

You can create the graphs yourself here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

You don’t need to Photoshop the image, thus I’ve withdrawn my throw away comment about Photoshop. Which I note was intended to be satirical, but still I felt compelled to remove it to save people’s confusion or spare them a sense of outrage. 

Now given:

• the history of denying the link between human activities and climate change at WUWT
• the long running antipathy towards the work of climate scientists at WUWT

My interpretation remains more than reasonable. 

To the general public this may seem an obscure debate over the minutiae of graphs and data. But Mr. Watts content makes its way into the mainstream press via blogs such as Andrew Bolt.

Hence my focus on the use or potential misuse of images, data and information.

WUWT is a site that exists to cast doubt on climate change.

Much of the information presented there is crafted to undermine the scientific consensus.

Thus as a true sceptic – not one who merely adorns the garb of the curious – I will continue to question the use and misuse of information on sites such as WUWT.

Over to you Anthony: if you’re calling me out then likewise

Sceptics here have asked that make an amendment to the original version of this post, which I have.

Now it is time for them to acknowledge the information presented in the graphs at WUWT lacks context. Now is the time for them to admit WUWT uses a presentation format four years out of date.

The record of my transparency, openness and honesty is here for the entire world to see and judge.

Now it is time for Anthony to live by the same standards he demands of others and fix his mistake.

Over to you Anthony.

Tipping point: the Arctic is a slowly boiling jug of ice water

Summer is the period when sea-ice reaches it’s minimum extent in the Arctic, but thanks to climate change this extent has been declining rapidly.

There are signs the Arctic is approaching a death spiral, when the Arctic will be ice-free during the summer months. 

This will have profound effects on the planet’s climate.

As Robert Scribbler notes in his blog the past few weeks have been concerning:

Over the past month, warmth and energy have been building in the Arctic. All around, from Siberia to Scandinavia to Alaska, heatwaves have flared beneath anomalous long-wave patterns in the Jet Stream. Patterns, that in many cases have persisted for months. The Alaskan heat dome sent temperatures there to 98 degrees (Fahrenheit). Temperatures in Siberia flared to the low 90s. And heat built and flared again in Scandinavia and Northeastern Europe, sending Arctic temperatures first into the 80s and then to 92. 

This building and highly anomalous heat was coupled by another unusual event — a long duration series of Arctic storms that have thinned and weakened large sections of sea ice near the North Pole. This Persistent Arctic Cyclone has flared and faded, remaining in the Arctic since late May. 

Now, with central sea ice weakened and with heat circling in from all around, the Arctic appears to be bracing for a period of rapid sea ice loss.

Last year we saw a record decline in sea ice. This year’s decline did not seem as precipitous, tracking slightly below the 1981-2012 average extent and within standard deviation.

As the above graph from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center indicates, the trend of the past few weeks looks worrisome.

A sharp decline is obvious, pushing it closer to the 2012 record minimum – though I hasten to add within the standard deviations.

Noise or signal?

Hard to say at this point, but I’ll be watching the trend over August. What ever the outcome, low and declining sea-ice extent during the summer months can be considered “the new normal”.

Tipping point cometh?

The oceans cover 70% of the planet’s surface, and are a crucial component of the climate system itself.

But at some point the oceans will stop soaking up the extra heat/energy we’re adding to the climate system.

Like a slowly boiling jug of ice water, we’ll reach a tipping point.

At first the temperature rise is imperceptible.

Slowly the heat builds – slowly the ice begins to melt.

Linear – manageable.

To preserve the ice, one merely has to remove the source of the heat. 

But what if you don’t?

What if you continue to expose the contents of the jug to the same – or increased – levels of heat?

Slowly the heat builds – slowly the ice melts.

But there comes a point when the ice is gone.

A tipping point is reached and passed.

Within moments, the water reaches boiling point.

This simple brute fact of physics is now playing out in the Arctic.

One Degree matters: interesting program on Age TV

Dear all, no post today but a recommendation: One Degree Matters on The Age TV. It presents the real world evidence for climate change. But in addition, the producers take a group of individuals on a journey across the globe and ask them how they’d respond to the challenge:

Presenting the latest science on climate change, this is an informative and inspirational documentary which offers realistic solutions and gives the reality of global warming a human face, showcasing amazing examples of individuals and communities tackling the world’s environmental problems. One Degree traces the impact of temperatures increases, measuring the slippages of the Greenland ice cap into the Arctic Ocean.

Of sea ice & Andrew Bolt: freedom of speech under attack?

Pity Andrew Bolt who seems to be under some form of “investigation’ by the dark forces of censorship.

In a November 20 blog post titled Record ice around Antarctica Blot hints that he – and indeed the very notion of freedom of speech – is under attack:  

I am in a dispute with a free-speech regulator which fancies putting out a statement declaring this freezing essentially patchy, small and recent and proposes to find fault in me not quoting warmists who make irrelevant arguments…

All very sinister by the sounds of it. One wonders if Andrew was dragged out of the Herald Sun’s South Bank tower in the middle of the night, and like Galileo shown the instruments of torture. What has our fearless commentator now said that has sent the forces of darkness against him?

Bolt has been pushing the old denier canard that the growth of sea ice in Antarctica somehow disproves climate change. Bolt references an article from that august scientific publication from the UK The Daily Mail. Titled Now there’s more ice at South Pole than ever (So much for global warming thawing Antarctica!):

Ice around the South Pole has expanded to cover a record area, scientists revealed yesterday – a month after saying that the North Pole had lost an unprecedented amount of its ice.

Researchers say – rather confusingly – that both occurrences are down to the ‘complex and surprising’ effects of global warming.

The record Antarctic sea ice cover was revealed in satellite images from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado….

At the end of the southern winter in September, ice covered 7.51million square miles of sea – more than at any time since records began in 1979. For the last 30 years the amount of Antarctic sea ice has been increasing by 1 per cent each decade.

One assumes a complaint was made to Australian Press Council (APC) about of one of Andrew’s many lies misrepresentations concerning climate change.

And no, it wasn’t me – but I’ve often thought about it. Still I have little doubt what conclusions such an investigation would find: Andrew got his facts wrong. Again.

But let’s be clear about one thing: freedom of speech is not under attack.

Andrew Bolt is a privileged member of the media elite; he commands a large audience, gets paid handsomely and seeks to influence the political debate within Australia. Bolt is not an outlier – despite posing as a gadfly or intellectual rebel. He is simply one of the more prominent members of News Limited’s stable of conservative journalists.

Unlike Mr Bolt, most ordinary individuals lack the backing of a global media giant that generates billions in revenue and armies of lawyers to represent you in court when you get basic facts wrong.

Regulators such as the APC and ACMA help provide a level playing field. Checks and balances are essential to limit abuses of power. The APC and ACMA are merely part of a system of checks and balances.

Let’s be honest these aren’t vast, monolithic agents of totalitarian repression. They’re rather toothless really: they’re primary role is help foster standards.

Standards such as getting the facts right.

What Andrew Bolt and many of the other hyper-sensitive climate change sceptics frequently overlook is that criticism and having you claims critically examined by a neutral third-party is not censorship.

It rather simple really: when you fail to play by the rules of evidence, you’re going to get caught out.

And if you’re wrong – as Andrew is so very often on climate change – then it is only reasonable to expect repercussions. If you’re wrong, you are going to be called on it. Indeed, this debate and validation of claims are an essential part this whole “freedom of speech” thing Andrew wishes to make himself the poster boy for.

Freedom of speech is not just shouting at the world your own point of view, which is what Andrew seems to believe. There is the freedom for others to answer back and challenge claims.

Andrew Bolt is free to lie, misrepresent and distort the facts about climate change.

But no amount of chest-pounding and hyperbole is going to change the fact that he is consistently wrong about the science of climate change.

However in a rather grandiose fashion, Bolt conflates criticism of his many factual errors with an attack on free speech, liberty and democracy.

He simply can’t admit error; therefore he turns these episodes into little mini-dramas in which he is the victim of a vast conspiracy of leftists, warmists, socialists and nasty environmentalists.

How else can he explain to both himself and the diminishing ranks of climate sceptics these “attacks”?

Surely HE can’t be wrong… surely it’s the fault of those scheming “warmists” making “irrelevant arguments”.

And the sea ice?

Yes it is true the sea ice has been growing 1 per cent each decade. But Bolt and the denial cheer squad exclude some key facts.

Overall, Antarctica is losing ice: sea ice may be increasing due to the complex interplay of winds, a declining Ozone hole and natural variation.

But Bolt and the deniers overlook – deliberately – the fact that land ice is declining.

As this National Geographic article points out, Antarctica is warming but at a slower pace than the Arctic:

Q. While Arctic sea ice is decreasing, the Antarctic is now slightly increasing. Why is there so much variation between Arctic and Antarctic ice?

Well we have a continent on the South Pole. On the North Pole we have nothing but ocean. In the Arctic you see full-fledged warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, plus increased ice transport [out of the region, which removes cold air and water]. So all of these effects contribute to reduce the sea ice cover in the Arctic.

In the Antarctic, you have to think of it as its own climate system. It’s a big continent isolated from the rest of the world. It has ocean all around it. It has wind regimes that blow clockwise around it and isolate it. It acts differently from the Arctic, which is completely connected to the rest of the North Hemisphere.

Q. Considering we regularly hear about the planet’s stressed climate system, is this good news?

Really, it’s consistent with our understanding of a warming world. Some of the regional details are not something we can easily predict. But the general trends of decay of the sea ice cover and decay of the Greenland ice sheets and ice caps is in line with what we expect.

The Antarctic has not been warming up as fast as the models thought. It’s warming up, but slower. So it’s all consistent with a warming planet.

What I suspect happened is this: Bolt, like most deniers, cherry picked some facts about Antarctica’s sea ice growing, alluding that climate change wasn’t real. Bolt has been called on this, and deeply resents the fact he has been made accountable.

The “irrelevant arguments” by warmists Andrew is desperate to dismiss are no doubt facts that challenge his world view.

VOD: Amazing video showing declining volume of Arctic sea ice (1979-2012)

Video of the day – an interesting way to track the declining volume of Arctic summer sea ice:

About;

Since 1979, the volume of Summer Arctic Sea Ice has declined by 75% and accelerating.

The first summer with an ice-free Arctic Ocean for at least a day is expected to happen within a decade. This video by Andy Lee Robinson illustrates the dramatic decline since 1979 until 2nd September 2012 (day 246). Sea Ice Volume is calculated using the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS, Zhang and Rothrock, 2003) developed at APL/PSC.

Rock bottom: Arctic sea ice reaches lowest extent on record

Will we be seeing this image on the front page of a major paper? Nah… didn’t think so.

Via NSIDC:

On September 16, Arctic sea ice appeared to have reached its minimum extent for the year of 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). This is the lowest seasonal minimum extent in the satellite record since 1979 and reinforces the long-term downward trend in Arctic ice extent. The sea ice extent will now begin its seasonal increase through autumn and winter.

Please note that this is a preliminary announcement. Changing winds could still push ice floes together, reducing ice extent further. NSIDC scientists will release a full analysis of the melt season in early October, once monthly data are available for September.

Yep: now I truly know what a death spiral looks like.

The Northwest Passage and Arctic: open for business?

Reprint of an artucle by Peter C. Doherty, University of Melbourne, on The Conversation 18 September 2012.

A combination of 33-year satellite records, measurements made over the past century, and long-term proxy analysis suggests Arctic sea ice may be at its lowest level for more than 1,000 years.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) figures for August 26 2012, Arctic sea ice cover dropped to less than 4 million square kilometres, tracking below the previous minimum in 2007 and 45% down on the levels recorded in the 1980s and 1990s.

The rate of decline has averaged out at 10.4% per decade.

This massive increase in the amount of ice-free ocean allowed three courageous adventurers to take the flimsy 9.3m fiberglass sloop Belzebub II on a three-month west/east transit of the fabled Northwest Passage, which they completed a short time ago.

Sailing via the M’Clure Strait (first traversed by icebreakers in the 1990s) to the Beaufort Sea, their voyage was not without risk. But they endured nothing like the hardships experienced by Roald Amundsen and his crew of six when they made the very first the east/west NW Passage crossing in 1903-6.

The Gjøa, Amundsen’s 21m, shallow-draft wooden herring boat, was frozen in for two years causing fears that, like the ice-fortified bomb-ships Erebus and Terror and the 129 men of the 1850s Franklin Expedition, they had all been lost.

With iron reinforcement fore and aft, a retractable rudder, and clad in Douglas fir covered by Australian ironwood, the 32m Royal Canadian Mounted Police Schooner St Roch (St Rock) reversed Amundsen’s route to complete a difficult 28-month west/east passage in 1942.

The crew used explosives to break up ice floes and, protected by the rounded hull that allowed the ship to be forced up by encroaching ice, they were frozen in for ten months. That technology was used earlier in Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram, the ship that took Roald Amundsen to Antarctica for his successful 1912 conquest of the South Pole.

Many will have seen Australian Frank Hurleys’ dramatic movie and still photographs of Ernest Shackleton’s 1915 Anatarctic expedition ship, the Endurance, being crushed to matchwood in an ice-vice. Though immensely strong, the Endurance was designed to force through floe ice and had a conventional, deep hull.

After the installation of a much more powerful engine, the St Roch made a much faster east/west transit using a more northerly route, though again with great difficulty due to encountering very heavy ice conditions.

Still, she was the first ship to traverse the Northwest Passage both ways, and the first to make the crossing in one season. The St Roch can be seen at the Vancouver Maritime Museum while, after being displayed for many years in San Francisco (where she was left by Amundsen) and then in Norway, a new home is being built for the Gjøa at the Fram Museum in Oslo. The watery graves of her Victorian majesty’s ships Erebus and Terror are yet to be located.

Though they were not icebreakers in the modern sense, these tough, wooden polar vessels endured conditions that would have crushed the deep-keeled Belzebub II like an eggshell.

Much of Amundsen’s transit was only possible because of the Gjøa’s shallow draft while, even in wartime, there was no suggestion that the St Roch had discovered a route that could be used by naval or supply ships.

With decreasing Arctic sea ice, many ships and smaller boats have made the transit over the past two decades. Now, it seems that the Northwest Passage will soon be officially open for summer business.

Maybe we should consider 2012 as a banner year for the Arctic, just as 1912 marked both triumph (Amundsen) and tragedy (Scott) in the annals of Antarctic exploration.

If though, we accept the majority scientific view that what is happening now with Arctic sea ice may be a bellwether of anthropogenic warming, will we ultimately see 2012 as triumphant, or as just one step in an emerging global tragedy?

Peter Doherty is a professor at the University of Melbourne and is a member of the Board of The Conversation. He also serves in a voluntary, unremunerated capacity as Chair of the Board that provides strategic oversight to the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Systems Science.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Reality bites: Arctic collapse in four years?

Hat tip Planet 3.0 and Desdemonia Despair:

One of the world’s leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years.

In what he calls a “global disaster” now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for “urgent” consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.

In an email to the Guardian he says: “Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades’ time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward.”

These include reflecting the sun’s rays back into space, making clouds whiter and seeding the ocean with minerals to absorb more CO2.

Wadhams has spent many years collecting ice thickness data from submarines passing below the arctic ocean. He predicted the imminent break-up of sea ice in summer months in 2007, when the previous lowest extent of 4.17 million square kilometres was set. This year, it has unexpectedly plunged a further 500,000 sq km to less than 3.5m sq km. “I have been predicting [the collapse of sea ice in summer months] for many years. The main cause is simply global warming: as the climate has warmed there has been less ice growth during the winter and more ice melt during the summer.

“At first this didn’t [get] noticed; the summer ice limits slowly shrank back, at a rate which suggested that the ice would last another 50 years or so. But in the end the summer melt overtook the winter growth such that the entire ice sheet melts or breaks up during the summer months.

“This collapse, I predicted would occur in 2015-16 at which time the summer Arctic (August to September) would become ice-free. The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates”.

Wadhams says the implications are “terrible”.

Arctic Code Red: we are losing ice the area of Tasmania every day

No cause for alarm?

To appreciate the true scale – if not horror – of what is happening in the Arctic  read this:

Right now the Arctic ice is melting so fast we’re losing ice the size of Tasmania every day. This year’s melt has already smashed all records, and is still going.

The frightening part? Melting ice exposes seawater that absorbs more heat from the sun, making the cycle worse. Yet this story is not all over the front pages.

Arctic ice always melts in the Arctic summer, then freezes from mid-September. But when it melts this much, the world should take heed.

What can we do when the media ignore colossal news? Well, 13 million Australians are now on Facebook, and people reading this article could reach half a million of them. We can’t fix the lack of ice, but we can fix the lack of information.

Let’s step up where the media failed and spread this message everywhere. The Arctic melt is staggering new evidence of climate change.

As I said before, if stock markets crashed like this the response of government’s would be very different.

Share this link on Facebook and where ever you can.

Please.

Deniers hit record low on sea ice: Anthony Watts lies; Marc Morano qualifies as the Iraqi Information Minister of climate denial

One swallow does not make a spring.

Nor does one record low for Arctic ice signify the immediate and imminent end of the world.

So then, why has the announcement by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) on the new record low for the Arctic sea ice got many talking, tweeting and blogging?

The death spiral of the Arctic is but one data point. As an isolated phenomenon it is concerning – what is important is that this is part of an emerging pattern that matches scientific predictions made decades ago.

This is why so many are focussed on the issue, and why the denial machine is in state of utter conniption (see below).

To put it bluntly: scientists said this shit would happen.

The shit appears to be happening.

QED: this shit is real.

Indeed, the shit is not merely hitting the fan, its knocking the fan from the ceiling and ploughing right on through into the stratosphere.

Climate change is generating fast-moving-super-powered shit and we’re standing between it and what ever trajectory it’s on.

As the kids like to say: “This shit just got real…“

The record low for Arctic sea ice merely confirms our understanding of the multiple impacts of climate change: how it is now manifesting in extreme weather events; the Greenland ice sheet melt; rising sea and land temperatures; all of which paint a picture.

Its takes a very focussed mind to ignore all of the above, and dismiss this concerning event.

Thus the concern trolls who say “Look, maybe climate change is a problem but in regard to this issue there’s been only 33 years of satellite data” are no better than the outright deniers.

Yes – we understand it is only one data point. And if this was an isolated event we’d be saying “Interesting, perhaps we should look into this phenomenon, eh?”

But focussing on the fact we have a “mere” thirty years of satellite data is no different from saying we have only a century-and-a-half of temperature records from actual instruments.

Step back: look at the big picture.

Falling down: the denial continues, but from a distance its revealing

To those who think “Surely at this point, even the most hard-core “sceptics” have to accept the data?” the answer is a definitive “No, they won’t”.

For an example of this look no further than Anthony Watts (Watts up with that?) and Marc Morano (Climate Depot).

These men have spent a considerable portion of their adult lives – and I might add built public profiles – denying the science and undermining public trust in scientists.

Expecting them to repudiate their life’s work in response to mere facts, scientific data and the overwhelming consensus of experts is a naive hope.

Anthony Watts – after rousing himself from bed after a hard night poring over temperature data downloaded from public sources – gets straight to the task of convincing himself there is nothing to worry about:

No matter what though, its all just quibbling over just a little more than 30 years of satellite data, and it is important to remember that. It is also important to remember that MASIE wasn’t around during the last record low in 2007, and IMS was just barely out of beta test from 2006. As measurement systems improve, we should include them in the discussion

Yes, because high school graduate Watts has picked up something NASA and the NISDC have overlooked: Mr. Watts, the Nobel Committee will be knocking on your door soon.

No really Anthony – I promise, like soon.

You know, I could debunk what is merely a very public example of cognitive dissonance – but why? Tamino does it here – clearly he has a stronger stomach than I do.

But I will note Watts uses “Aspect two” of my Six Aspects of Denial:

Question the motives and integrity of scientists – This is the favourite tactic of the climate change denial movement. They claim the scientists are engaged in fraud, or are being pressured by governments to make up the results…

Such tactics can clearly be seen in Watts post:

“Note that we don’t see media pronouncements from NOAA’s NATICE center like “death spiral” and “the Arctic is screaming” like we get from its activist director, Mark Serreze. So I’d tend to take NSIDC’s number with a grain of salt, particularly since they have not actively embraced the new IMS system when it comes to reporting totals. Clearly NSDIC knows the value of the media attention when they announce new lows, and director Serreze clearly knows how to make hay from it.”

Yes – the NSIDC and its “activist” director are clearly a pack of media whores hungry for fame.

In fact, I’d suggest Serreze is the Lady Ga Ga of the scientific world, engaging in publicity stunts in order foster celebrity status.

Expect Serreze to be adorning a “meat dress” at the next Warmist Convention…

But for the throwing of chum, spinning of facts and sheer chutzpah of denying reality the award surely goes to Marc Morano of Climate Depot

Here is a man who has done more to sway public opinion against the science.

Today he goes into overdrive in an attempt to not merely wave away concern, but shout down doubt:.

Irony free would you believe…

Yes, Climate Depot will explain it all away for you….

Even a cursory glance today’s Climate Depot reveals the sheer desperation of Morano.

His repeated “It’s not happening, it’s not real, it’s not happening, it’s not real!” show cases not merely special pleading, but dissembling on an epic scale.

So clearly at odds with reality is Morano’s public statements he must qualify the climate deniers equivalent of Iraqi Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf.

Morano is – quite literally – falling down in a very public way.