Watts Up With Polariced Mysteries?

It’s not very often that we discuss an article from Watts Up With That with even the vaguest hint of approval in the smoke filled editorial offices at the Great White Con, but here’s the exception that proves the rule! No doubt the fact that allegedly I inspired the article in question is also relevant? Here’s the start of a guest post at WUWT entitled “Polariced Mysteries“, written by our old friend Willis Eschenbach:

I got into a discussion about polar sea ice in the comments to my post Where Is The Climate Emergency?. In the process I noticed some mysteries.

To start with, here’s the Arctic sea ice area record.

The mystery for me in this record is the decade from about 1998 to 2008. There’s very little month-to-month variation in the record over that period, and the ice area is dropping steadily … followed by ~ thirteen years of very large month-to-month variations with little overall change in ice area. Is this real? Is it an artifact? Unknown.

Then we have the Antarctic ice area record …

Here, the obvious mystery is, just what the heck happened around 2015-2017 to cause the Antarctic ice area to drop so precipitously?

And finally, putting both poles together, we get the following:

etc. etc…

At the North Pole, there is an ocean covered with sea ice. At the South Pole, there’s a high rocky plateau covered with land ice and surrounded by sea ice. Yet despite these totally different situations, the area of sea ice is almost exactly the same at both poles … say what?

I will say that I am overjoyed that the world of climate contains far more mysteries than answers …

“When nothing is for sure, we remain alert, perennially on our toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.”
—Carlos Castaneda, in The Teachings of Don Juan

My best to all adventurers in this most marvelous universe,

Thanks for your good wishes Willis, but there is a big black fly in the marvellous universal ointment. No sooner had a potentially enlightening discussion begun than darkness descended from on high:

At the risk of repeating myself:

What do you suppose the effect of ice-albedo feedback will prove to be over the next 10 years or so? Or if you prefer over the last 10 years or so?

And why “remove the seasonality”. As you correctly pointed out over there, “When the ice is mostly there the sun mostly isn’t”.

3 thoughts on “Watts Up With Polariced Mysteries?

  1. Andy May has just had another article published at Watts Up With That, creatively entitled “Fact checking Steven Koonin’s Fact Checkers“:

    The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published a review of Steven Koonin’s new book Unsettled on April 25, a little over a week before it went on sale. A blog called “Climate Feedback” published a “Fact Check” of the book review on May 3rd, the day before the book came out. This so-called fact check was used by Facebook to attempt to discredit the WSJ review and the book itself whenever a post linked to the book review.

    The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board objected to this practice with a strongly worded editorial. They pointed out the so-called “fact check” was not checking anything, but simply arguing against Koonin’s analysis. Arguing with Koonin is fine, arguing is an important part of science, but don’t call it a fact check. The “fact check” blog post doesn’t contradict or challenge anything in Koonin’s book. Koonin provides a rebuttal in today’s WSJ here.

    Koonin’s more detailed point-by-point rebuttal of the fact check is here.

    Needless to say my pertinent comment on Andy’s WUWT article remains invisible:

  2. Jim, Watts has shown great initiative in automating his censorship and disinformation efforts years before AI blog and tweetbots came on the scene .
    https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/06/wii.html

    It’s hard to say just when they debuted on WUWT, as much of his commentariat generates text at levels of scientific fluency intermediate between GPT-3 and Wu Bao 2.0

  3. Hi Russell,

    Thanks for another one of your always entertaining interjections:

    Defeating WUWTnets using an observe-pursue-counter architecture is analyzed, and the technical feasibility is affirmed!

    You will no doubt be pleased to learn that Joe Biden made it safely over here to Cornwall despite the pesky critters in his engines:

    https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/04/the-2021-g7-summit-in-cornwall/

    We have warm beer here in England, as well as in Greenland, which may not be to Joe’s taste. However I’m sure he will be pleased with our efforts to exterminate the recently rejuvenated critter commonly known as Climategate:

    https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/06/mud-wrestling-with-climategate-pigs/

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