Dr Harrison [was] asked about climate skeptics and he goes on to say that they are not worth debating their viewpoint as it’s “like mud wrestling with pigs. Firstly you get covered in mud and secondly, the pig loves it” he then goes on to say he won’t debate skeptics because geographers don’t debate with people who think the world is flat and biologists don’t debate with people who think evolution isn’t happening or that the world is only 6000 years old.
Us:
Fresh from indulging in some “mud wrestling” with Anthony Watts myself, I felt compelled to contribute my own two new pence worth to the ongoing “debate”:
I don’t know if this counts as “mud wrestling with pigs” but here at WUWT seems to be no place to “engage in a fair public debate”. By way of example see:
I don’t like it when an anonymous moderator snips a comment without a good reason. In your case it was done improperly. I am sorry about that.
Sincerely,
Us:
Thanks for your note. I previously hadn’t the faintest inkling that you are one of the moderators at WUWT, let alone a senior one. It did however seem to me that your comment on the “Mud wrestling” thread deserved to be balanced by recounting my own recent experience on the “Study” thread.
That said, my riposte to GreggB’s long list of wholly unjustified accusations remains “snipped”, and my request for Anthony to reveal his sources remains unanswered, so I remain an unhappy bunny!
After having a brush with the “Real Science” censor last month I’ve really gone and done it now. Steven Goddard’s blog has been badmouthing Al Gore recently. I’m afraid I couldn’t let that slight on Al’s predictive abilities go unchallenged. Steve evidently didn’t care for my suggestion that he “is fond of poetic license”, so my alter ego is “now spam” there too:
I’ve cut out much of the gratuitous abuse in the ensuing conversation, but you can peruse an archived version if you so desire. Note amongst other things that Al Gore never mentioned “16 foot thick ice in the Beaufort Sea”. Here are the expurgated highlights:
Them:
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Al Gore says that the 16 foot thick ice in the Beaufort Sea will all melt in the next few weeks.
“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said in 2009.
There’s still plenty of time left for some of the models to be proved 75% correct!
Them:
“Some models suggest.” I love that – so very scientific. Some do, others don’t.
Us:
I realise Steve is fond of poetic license, but my point is that in the article Steve references Al Gore did not “predict an ice free Arctic in 2014″. He didn’t even “predict an ice free Arctic by 2016 at the latest”
Steve – My Gore quote from April 15, 2014 at 10:41 am is cut/pasted from the article you just linked to. Here’s another quote from the same article, presumably a journalist’s interpretation of Gore’s words:
“Today at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Al Gore said there is new computer modeling that suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014.”
Them:
“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore said.
Attack Gore for being an idiot. Not me for reporting on it.
Us:
Unpublished comment on the “Real Science” blog from Wednesday April 16th at 12:55 UTC
Them:
They have so far neglected to publish the above comment.
Construction of Ice Camp Barneo 2014 began close to the North Pole at the beginning of April, and now the first scientific data has started flowing from the sea ice near the Pole. The first of three webcams has been successfully installed on the ice, and the slightly noisy initial images are available from the North Pole Environmental Observatory 2014 web site:
NPEO webcam 1 image from April 14th 2014
Data is now also arriving from ice mass balance buoy 2014E, which as you can see if you click on the pushpins on the map below, has been drifting at the rate of 16 km / day during its brief lifetime on the Arctic sea ice so far:
Here’s the initial temperature profile for 2014E:
At present the ice on the floe is 1.7 m thick, covered with 19 cm of snow. As you can see, temperatures were a touch chilly when the buoy was installed on April 12th, at around -32 degrees Celsius. A variety of expeditions have already set off from Barneo in various directions. Expedition Hope are heading in the direction of Cape Discovery on Ellesmere Island, and here Bernice Nootenboom illustrates the effects of such low temperatures on the human body:
Bernice Nootenboom near the North Pole. Photo: Martin Hartley
You can also view data from IMB 2014E and the other active ice mass balance buoys on our IMB overview page.
Stung by some unusually constructive criticism from Anthony Watts we have (somewhat hurriedly) added several new pages to the Great White Con “Resources” section of this web site. They contain the sort of information that is rather tricky to update automatically on a daily basis, and concentrate on resources that help the interested searcher after truth get a handle on the thickness and hence volume of the sea ice in the Arctic, on a regional as well as pan Arctic scale.
The first section is entitled “Arctic Sea Ice Graphs“, and here’s an example of one graph which reveals the ice volume in various regions of the Arctic, based on the output of the PIOMAS model:
The second section is entitled “Ice Mass Balance Buoys“. As the name hopefully suggests, this section displays data reported by the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory’s currently active ice mass balance buoys in a variety of novel formats. These buoys are deployed on a regular basis at selected locations across the Arctic, and report on a number of different parameters including snow depth, ice thickness and temperature. By way of example here’s a couple of reports from IMB 2013F, which was originally deployed last August on what was then classified as “first year” ice in the Beaufort Sea. First of all here’s the Google Maps/Earth view that reveals how the buoy has moved around the Arctic since then, and shows how clicking on one of the “pushpins” reveals the values of a variety of interesting metrics on a daily basis:
Google map of the movement of IMB 2013F
As you can see, last August the thickness of the ice floe that the buoy is located upon was 1.4 metres thick. If you click through to the live map and experiment you will discover, amongst a variety of other things, that the ice under the buoy is now 1.68 meters thick, with an additional 49 cm of snow on top of that.
A second set of images shows graphs revealing the temperature above, below and within the ice, currently on a monthly basis:
Click on the graph to view a larger version. This one requires a certain amount of interpretation, but the first thing to note is that the numbers across the top represent the position of thermistors spaced 10 cm apart on a pole that is mounted vertically through the ice floe. Number 1 is in the air above the floe, the rightmost side of the graph (number 26 in this case) is in the water below the ice floe, and somewhere in between those extremes the temperature sensors can also be in the midst of either ice or snow.
At the end of March the interface between ice and snow in this case was somewhere between sensors 8 and 9, and hence at a temperature of around – 7 degrees Celsius, by which time the buoy had moved from the Canadian waters where it started into the area of the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska.
For further discussion about the interpretation of our new resources please use the comment section on the “About Our Arctic Sea Ice Resources” page. For technical observations and suggestions for improvements feel free to comment below!
In order to avoid the malicious “spammer” label attached to me by Steven Goddard of “Real Science” fame many moons ago I have been using the nom de guerre “Snow White” in skeptical circles for a while. Unfortunately my pseudonimity didn’t stand a chance against the laser sharp investigative skills of Anthony Watts. My embarrassment is now archived in the public record, plain for all to see:
An extract from the “WUWT near the center of the climate blogosphere” thread on the “Watts Up With That” blog on April 9, 2014 at 2:01 pm
A commenter at “Watts Up With That” then piled on the scorn:
“Snow White” is revealed as a “Cowardly cross dresser”, for all the world to see.
The thing is though, that in the process of so skilfully “outing” Snow White Anthony kindly pointed his loyal readers in the direction of our humble “Resources” section and our videos, so I suppose we’ll have to tart them all up a bit now!
Whilst a variety of climate change “skeptics” have been pointing out recently that the April 2014 edition of the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s Arctic Sea Ice News mentioned that:
A large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea
There is a lot of thick ice in the western Arctic, which will be difficult to melt this summer.
they glossed over the bit where the NSIDC added:
Where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.
In fact conditions have been very warm (relatively speaking!) in the Arctic for all of 2014 so far. The DMI daily mean temperature of the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel has never dropped below the long term average all winter:
DMI mean temperature north of the 80th northern parallel, on April 8th 2014
and the surface air temperature anomaly chart for the Arctic for the first three months of 2014 looks like this:
Arctic surface air temperature anomaly plot for January to March 2014
Those anomalously warm temperatures may well have something to do with the fact that the latest PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume estimates which have just been released reveal this:
PIOMAS arctic sea ice volume on March 31st from 1979-2014
As you can see, according to the PIOMAS model at least, Arctic sea ice volume has now reached the second lowest level for the date since the satellite record began.
Whilst the skeptics have been complaining about the amount of ice on the Great Lakes of North America they seem to have somehow failed to notice the anomalously low coverage of snow over Siberia. Here’s the surface air temperature anomaly forecast for the northern hemisphere tomorrow:
GFS 2m temperature anomaly forecast for 09:00 UTC on April 9th 2014
Do you see the bright red patch over the coast of the Laptev Sea, indicating temperatures 20 degrees Celsius above normal? Now take a look at a similar chart, but of the surface air temperatures themselves:
GFS 2m temperature forecast for 09:00 UTC on April 9th 2014
That reveals that the temperatures over the edge of the Laptev Sea are forecast to be above the freezing point of fresh water tomorrow. Just in case you’re wondering what the shores of the Laptev Sea look like at the moment, here’s a picture we recorded earlier today, courtesy of NASA Worldview and the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite:
The Laptev Sea as seen by the Aqua satellite on April 8th 2014
What do you suppose the same area will look like in a day or two’s time, or in a month or two’s time for that matter?
The percentage of the Arctic Ocean consisting of ice at least five years or older remains at only 7%, half of what it was in February 2007. Moreover, a large area of the multiyear ice has drifted to the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea (north of Alaska and the Lena River delta), where warm conditions are likely to exist later in the year.
We thought we’d point out to any interested WUWTers that actually warm conditions have existed in the southern Beaufort Sea and East Siberian Sea for quite some time now. However it appears as if the powers that be in WattsLand had other ideas:
Them:
Caleb says:
April 3, 2014 at 7:06 pm
RE: Tom in Denver says:
April 3, 2014 at 9:12 am
I think we need to pay less attention to 2 meter surface temperatures, and more attention to the temperature of the sea. Any time a polynya forms the sea is getting severely cooled by churning winds. Also the ice that has been moved south is going somewhere. In the case of Baffin Bay it was surging south right along the coast of Labrador and out into the Atlantic, creating above-average ice-extents in an area adjacent to the Gulf Stream.
Us:
Surface air temperature anomaly plot for January to March 2014
The self proclaimed “world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”, otherwise known as the “Watts Up With That?” blog, recently published an article entitled “Arctic Sea Ice Appears to Have Reached Maximum And Other Ice Observations”. Since I’ve been speculating about the date of the 2014 maximum Arctic sea ice extent myself I avidly read the article but found myself ultimately somewhat perplexed. There were lots of graphs and charts displayed, but there was no sight or mention of what seems to me the most relevant one of all. The long term trend. Here is an expurgated version of my attempts to bring this oversight to the attention of the Watts Up With Thatters:
Us:
A “dull” comment about Arctic sea ice trends
Them:
Re: Michael Jennings says:
March 26, 2014 at 7:07 am
[snip . . this is dull. Put some content into your contributions or you are just trolling . . mod]
Us:
At the risk of repeating myself, here’s the latest dull content out of NSIDC:
Do you see the blue line heading for the bottom right?
Snow White needs to get up to speed on the Scientific Method: skeptics have nothing to prove.
Rather, the onus is on the alarmist crowd to provide scientific evidence showing that their CO2/cAGW conjecture is true. They have failed miserably.
But there is no scientific evidence supporting their belief in manmade global warming. None at all. Every last climate model has failed. They were all wrong.
The alarmist crowd is fixated on Arctic ice, instead of on global ice cover. Why? Because that is their last forlorn hope; every other climate scare has been debunked. Well, it’s time to debunk the ‘disappearing Arctic ice’ scare, too:
Global sea ice is at it’s 30-year average [the red graph – click in chart to embiggen]. We already know about the polar see-saw, in which the NH and SH poles balance each other out. That effect can be clearly seen in the global ice chart above.
There is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. What we observe now has happened before, repeatedly, and to a much greater degree. Rational folks understand that. It is called the climate Null Hypothesis, and it has never been falsified. The Null Hypothesis is a corollary of the Scientific Method. So is the fact that the onus is on those who produce the catastrophic CO2/AGW conjecture, to suport their belief with scientific evidence.
But there is no evidence proving that Arctic ice is in unprecedented decline. None at all. There is no evidence to prove that the current Arctic ice fluctuation is anything other than natural climate variability. Occam’s Razor says that natural variability is by far the most likely explanation.
The Arctic ice scare is just the same as all the other climate scares. It is promoted by religious True Believers, who expect everyone to share in their Chicken Little panic.
But that only works on those who are ruled by emotion, and fright is an emotion. Scientific skeptics, OTOH, are logical, and therefore they are unaffected by the silly ‘Arctic ice’ scare.
Us:
So to summarise, you cannot muster a single chart to refute my assertion about Arctic sea ice decline, let alone “hundreds”.
For your edification, and for that of the writer of the original article who for some strange reason neglected to include a graph showing the long term trend in Arctic sea ice maximum extent, here is one I prepared earlier:
Provisional NSIDC annual maximum Arctic sea ice extent graph for 1979 – 2014
I’m sorry Snow White (or Mr Hunt, if you prefer), but I think that a little courtesy would be in order. I’ve read every word on the link you’ve provided, and the central theme of your original post was that “there was no sight or mention of what seems to me the most relevant one of all. The long term trend [of Arctic sea ice]“. You described more than one attempt to bring this deficit to the attention of WUWT.
Given that Michael D posted on your page at April 9, 2014 at 4:01 pm, politely pointing out that the WUWT sea ice page has just such data presented, it would seem a basic courtesy to either acknowledge his assistance (in this blog or yours) and either thank him, or explain why graph does not answer your criticisms.
I acknowledge that your arguments seem to have moved on to volume now, but they have been addressed by others, and better than I could have done. As an aside, I suppose I could run a blog with limited data about Antarctic sea ice coverage and volumes. I’m sure that I would be criticised, with comments explaining that I was looking at the mural through a microscope, and that the Antarctic buildup cannot be considered in isolation. I think that such criticism would be valid – your thoughts?
Us:
As you can see from the historical record, I asked on more than one occasion for someone to supply a link to “A long term (let’s say 30 years or more) graph for any measure of Arctic sea ice “quantity” showing anything other than a trend in the direction of the bottom right hand corner.” Nobody did. Nobody suggested looking at the WUWT sea ice page either, presumably because no graphs fitting my description can be found on there.
There’s accusations flying around the blogosphere in all directions at the moment on the currently very hot topic of “Recursive Fury”, also referred to as “Conspiracist Ideation” in the literature.
By way of a little background, this time last year the learned journal Frontiers in Psychology published a paper called “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation”. The lead author is Stephan Lewandowsky who is now Chair in Cognitive Psychology at Bristol University just up the M5 motorway from here. If you click that first link you will note that rather than being able to read the paper you will instead find a note from the editors that reads as follows:
In the light of a small number of complaints received following publication of the original research article cited above, Frontiers carried out a detailed investigation of the academic, ethical and legal aspects of the work. This investigation did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study. It did, however, determine that the legal context is insufficiently clear and therefore Frontiers wishes to retract the published article. The authors understand this decision, while they stand by their article and regret the limitations on academic freedom which can be caused by legal factors.
That form of words has changed recently, because for last twelve months or so it has said instead:
This article, first published by Frontiers on 18 March 2013, has been the subject of complaints. Given the nature of some of these complaints, Frontiers has provisionally removed the link to the article while these issues are investigated, which is being done as swiftly as possible and which Frontiers management considers the most responsible course of action. The article has not been retracted or withdrawn. Further information will be provided as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
Contrarians bully journal into retracting a climate psychology paper. After threats of frivolous libel and defamation lawsuits, a journal will retract an academically sound paper.
Nobody likes being called a conspiracy theorist, and thus climate contrarians really didn’t appreciate Recursive Fury. Very soon after its publication, the journal Frontiers was receiving letters from contrarians threatening libel lawsuits. In late March 2013, the journal decided to “provisionally remove the link to the article while these issues are investigated.” The paper was in limbo for nearly a full year until Frontiers finally caved to these threats.
The University of Western Australia (UWA: Lewandowsky’s university when Recursive Fury was published – he later moved to the University of Bristol) also investigated the matter and found no academic, ethical, or legal problems with the paper. In fact, UWA is so confident in the validity of the paper that they’re hosting it on their own servers.
Click that link if you want read the paper and discover what all the fuss is about. In addition to all the virtual newsprint Stephan Lewandowsky has also released a video telling his side of the story. Here it is:
At this point you may possibly be wondering what all this has to do with The Great White Con? Well, we’re obviously concerned at the apparent threat to academic freedom posed by “contrarian bullying”, as are lots of other people. However there’s more to it than that from our perspective. Take a look at the section of the video starting at about 2 minutes 40 seconds. In it you will spot a headline we are extremely familiar with here at GWC Ivory Towers, from the very same Mail on Sunday article by David Rose that persuaded us to launch this humble site last September! As Stephan puts it (at 3:20):
The bottom’s falling out of the Arctic, so we have a serious problem. We have a problem with the planet, but we also have a problem with the fact that in my opinion the public’s right to be informed accurately is being violated through the injection of disinformation at a time when the clock is ticking and the planet is accumulating energy.
We felt sure Mr. Rose would have some comment to make on such a controversial topic, and we were not disappointed. Over on Twitter once more the following conversation ensued:
Them:
@hockeyschtick1@ClimateDepot The Soviets medicalised dissent by jailing opponents in mental hospitals. Lewandosky is not so different.
USS Skate (SSN-578) made submarine history on 11 August 1958 when it became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole
Us:
It would seem to be the USS Skate on 11 August 1958 when it became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole. What is this picture of?
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the North Pole area on September 2nd 2013, derived from bands 1, 4 and 3 of the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
Them:
Frozen ice. What is my prize?
And basically yours is just a snipe hunt. Mine disproves your hysteria.
Us:
No prize I’m afraid. The correct answer is vast areas of open ocean. Plenty of room for every submarine on the planet.
Them:
Sorry, there is no open water. Check your picture again. So you are reneging? Typical.
Us:
I have checked again, and I still see lots of open water underneath a thin veil of cloud. Perhaps you should arrange a hasty visit to an optician? Luckily microwaves can see through clouds, even if you cannot. Here’s another satellite image of the North Pole area from September 2nd 2013, this time a University of Hamburg visualisation of data from the AMSR2 sensor on board the Japanese SHIZUKU satellite.
AMSR2 image of the North Pole area on September 2nd 2013
You have X-ray vision? I am sorry! I did not realize you were stuper girl! Want to try again? This time with normal vision.
BTW. for the SLOOOOOW learners. 85 North +/= North pole. The North Pole is WITHIN 85 North. But it is NOT 85 North.
The Skate is at 90 North. The NORTH POLE.
You may have x-ray vision, but you still cannot read a map. neither picture shows open water AT the north pole.
How many submarines are on the planet Snowy? better recheck your figures. They are not tinker toys.
Us:
You’re a hard man to please Phil! Feast your eyes on this picture instead then:
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the North Pole area on August 28th 2013, derived from bands 1, 4 and 3 of the MODIS sensor on the Aqua satellite
Them:
We’ll keep you posted!
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