The David and Judy Show

Extent, ,

In case today’s headline metaphor doesn’t readily translate into other cultures, it refers to the popular fairground sideshow in which a couple of puppets dance on the end of some strings, accompanied from time to time by a baby, some sausages, a crocodile and a police officer.

Us:

The Great White Con was recently mentioned on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, where the discussion turned to news of a recently published academic journal article by Marcia Glaze Wyatt and Judith A. Curry entitled “Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century”.

In one response it was suggested that:

I always think it’s terribly sad when a study is immediately condemned on the basis of not whether it has been peer reviewed, or methodology, or objectiveness, but on the basis of who wrote it. It’s the classic open goal displayed by supporters of the consensus (which includes myself) to anything which may challenge entrenched beliefs.

Them:

In partial answer to that point, here’s a screenshot from an article entitled “Arctic sea ice minimum?” on Judith Curry’s personal blog this morning:

An extract from Judith Curry's blog article "Arctic sea ice minimum?" on October 13th 2013
An extract from Judith Curry’s blog article “Arctic sea ice minimum?” on October 13th 2013

Us:

From the other side of the fence here’s a couple of screenshots from the September 4th edition of the NSIDC’s Arctic Sea Ice News entitled “A Real Hole Near the North Pole“:

NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice News report for August 2012
NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice News report for August 2012

The NSIDC discuss "Water Near the Pole" on September 4th 2013
The NSIDC discuss “Water Near the Pole” on September 4th 2013

Would anyone care to play “Spot the difference” with me? If the differences between the official National Snow and Ice Data Center version of recent events in the Arctic and David and Judy’s version aren’t immediately obvious to you there are plenty of clues sprinkled throughout the rest of this web site to help. Does any of that help to explain my comment on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog to the effect that:

If [Judith Curry] can’t even get the basics right I fail to see why anyone (apart from David Rose of course) should place any credence whatsoever in her “Stadium Waves”, although I must admit I haven’t read the paper yet. I fear it will be a while before it rises to the top of my “to do” list.

Russia’s Northern Shores

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Regular readers will have realised by now that we’ve been pestering the Mail and The Telegraph with telephone calls and emails for weeks now. That’s because, as The Economist put it last weekend:

There are climate facts—and facts are stubborn things.

Both The Mail and The Telegraph have now corrected a couple of the gross inaccuracies they printed (virtually and/or physically) on September 8th, but many more remain. One of those is the identical phrase in both articles saying:

An unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

The fact of the matter is that this statement is untrue. I’ve recently received a couple of letters about this from “The Daily Telegraph” signed by “Robert Winnett, Head of News”. Here’s an extract from the first one:

Them:

Reputable evidence exists to show an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shore.  This can be seen on the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s website [in the article] “A Real Hole Near the North Pole“.  The site states that the average ice extent for August 2013 was 6.09 million square kilometres, which is more than half the size of Europe.

Us:

Have I got news for you Robert!  If you’d read any of the articles on here, or watched any of the videos I linked to in my emails, that wasn’t the “fact” I was quibbling about. The fact is that the Arctic “ice sheet” was not “unbroken” and did not “stretch… to Russia’s northern shore” on September 8th 2013 and for considerable periods of time both before and after that date. Here’s an extract from The Telegraph’s second letter:

Them:

In reply to your enquiry, the Telegraph’s policy is to correct clear inaccuracies once we are alerted to them – and in appropriate cases update articles on our website.

Us:

I thought I’d already made this perfectly plain, but evidently not, so here’s yet another alert about clear inaccuracies in the “reporting” of climate science in The Telegraph:

Broadcasting House’s Million Square Kilometre Blunder

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It has just been brought to my attention that the topic of Arctic sea ice was raised by Angela Rippon on the edition of “Broadcasting House” that aired on BBC Radio 4 on the morning of Sunday September 29th. In her review of that Sunday’s papers Angela had the following to say:

Them:

Tucked away at the bottom of a page in the Mail on Sunday is a piece saying that “The Arctic ice experts have made a million kilometer blunder“, and this is again using computers, and apparently the official source of information on polar ice caps have got it’s figures for the recovery of the Arctic cap wrong by a million square miles, and they say that this was actually a typo, it was a typographical error, and there are no plans to make a statement on the change because it was just an error in the data. So what data CAN we believe?

Us:

Obviously that’s my own transcript rather than an official one from the BBC. By all means listen to the programme yourself, and let me know if I’ve inadvertently got something wrong. According to the BBC’s “BH” page it will be available for download there for another 25 days.

Now obviously as soon as I’ve finished writing this article I’m going to amble over to the BBC web site to lodge a formal complaint, in which I shall suggest that Angela and the BBC’s “BH” team read this website from cover to cover, starting with this very article.

As a preliminary answer to Angela’s final question I would like to suggest:

Certainly not the Mail on Sunday’s, and not the British Broadcasting Corporation’s either, unless they correct this particular blunder quicker than you can say “Global COOLING!” whilst simultaneously sipping a piña colada by the side of Santa’s super new low albedo summer swimming pool!

Will The Telegraph Print the Truth in the Cold Light of Day?

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I just received an emailed letter from the Telegraph’s Head of News, part of which reads as follows:

The Telegraph has looked into the matters you raise. As far as the points concerning ice extent are concerned, the incorrect information was derived from data published by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The mistaken information was due to a typographical error, which the NSIDC only corrected after the article that incorporated it was published. We have since updated the online versions of the article and explained why this was necessary.

There is no mention in the letter of any “updates” or “corrections” being put into print. The Telegraph are thus telling much the same story as the Mail, which is of course wholly unsatisfactory when it comes to correcting the long list of “inaccuracies and misrepresentations” they have recently published regarding the sorry state of sea ice in the Arctic. This is how they’ve done it:

Them:

Hayley Dixon’s article entitled “Global warming? No, actually we’re cooling, claim scientists” from September 8th now starts as follows:

There has been a 29 per cent increase in the amount of ocean covered with ice compared to this time last year, the equivalent of 533,000 square miles.

In a rebound from 2012’s record low, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin.

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific had remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

One ship has now managed to pass through, completing its journey on September 27.

with the following additional “explanation” at the end:

Update: As at the date the article was first posted it relied on information about ice extent from the Nasa-funded National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC). This information contained a typographical error which the NSIDC subsequently corrected. The article has been amended in line with the correct information.

In addition, we have amended our reference to the Northwest Passage following the successful traverse, completed on September 27 after our article was published, of the Danish bulk carrier Nordic Orion.

Us:

Should The Telegraph’s Head of News be interested in some slightly stale Northwest Passage news, here’s a picture published on econnexus.org on September 4th in an article linked to below, which takes a close look at the “pack ice” supposedly “blocking the North West Passage” on that date:

Sea ice concentration in the Northwest Passage on September 4th 2013, according to AMSR2
Sea ice concentration in the Northwest Passage on September 4th 2013, according to AMSR2

Them:

Geoffrey Lean’s article entitled “Global warming: Will the truth brave the cold light of day?” from September 13th now carries the following “explanation” at the bottom:

Update: After this article was published, a bulk carrier – the MV Nordic Orion – was able to pass through the Northwest Passage on its way from Vancouver to Finland.

Christopher Booker’s article entitled “The ice is not melting, yet still the scaremongers blunder on” from September 21st appears to be completely unmodified.

Us:

Here’s some extracts from my own (repeated) email to The Telegraph, to which they have also failed to respond satisfactorily (in my humble opinion!):

a) “An unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores,”

Inaccurate – See: https://greatWhiteCon.info/2013/09/an-unbroken-ice-sheet/ for plenty of visual evidence of that.

b) “The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.”

Inaccurate – See: http://econnexus.org/the-northwest-passage-in-2013/

c) “That has been enough to make a mockery of a much-publicised prediction, six years ago, by Prof Wieslaw Maslowski, of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, that the Arctic would be entirely ice-free by 2013”

Inaccurate – See (and hear) https://greatWhiteCon.info/2013/09/shock-news-why-isnt-the-arctic-ice-free/ for visual and aural evidence of that.

d) “The ice is not melting, yet still the scaremongers blunder on”

Inaccurate – The ice is melting. See Geoffrey Lean’s article!

I can see that this particular story is going to run and run!

Santa’s Secret Summer Swim

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This weekend the Mail on Sunday admitted that the headline numbers in David Rose’s  “And now it’s global COOLING!” article published on September 8th were inflated by a factor of approximately two. This is how they explained that discrepancy to their faithful readers:

Scan of the bottom of page 31 in the September 29th 2013 edition of the Mail on Sunday
The bottom of page 31 in the September 29th 2013 edition of the Mail on Sunday

Can you spot the MILLION square km blunder by the Mail on Sunday? For the benefit of the scientifically illiterate amongst you I’ll explain, as I did yesterday in an email to the Mail on Sunday’s Managing Editor:

It appears that whoever writes your headlines is unaware of the difference between “A MILLION km” and “a million square km”. The former is a distance, and hence has no area. The latter IS an area.

Them:

As you can clearly see, the Mail reported yesterday that:

On September 4, NSIDC, based at the University of Colorado, stated on its website that in August 2013 the Arctic ice cover recovered by a record 2.38 million sq km – 919,000 sq miles – from its 2012 low.

News of this figure was widely reported – including by MailOnline – on September 8.

Us:

The headline of the report published on the NSIDC website on September 4th reads as follows:

A real hole near the pole

The related text reads as follows:

A large hole (roughly 150 square kilometers or 58 square miles) of near-zero ice concentration appears to have opened up at about 87 degrees North latitude. Small areas of open water are common within the ice pack, even at the North Pole, as the ice pack shifts in response to winds and currents, resulting in cracks (called leads) in the ice. The current opening seen in our satellite imagery is much larger.

and the relevant area of the accompanying satellite imagery looks like this:

University of Bremen colour visualisation of Arctic sea ice concentration for September 2nd 2013
University of Bremen AMSR2 colour visualisation of Arctic sea ice concentration for September 2nd 2013

Them:

Since the Mail’s intrepid reporter evidently read those words and looked at that picture, why on Earth do you suppose that the Mail on Sunday printed these words four days later?

Days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

Even more to the point, why on Earth do you suppose that the Mail on Sunday left those words unaltered following their September 28th edit of the online version of that article?

Us:

Here’s our latest video update on the 2013 Arctic sea ice refreeze. The “Polar Polynya” is prominent by its presence, as is the broad band of open water between the “broken ice sheet” and “Russia’s northern shores”:

The Mail Makes Modest Amends

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Here’s the text of a comment I just left on The Telegraph web site underneath an article written by Christopher Booker entitled “The ice is not melting, yet still the scaremongers blunder on”:

In case anyone in here is vaguely interested, I just received an email from the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday, part of which reads as follows:

“You are correct in pointing out that the main figure in that article was wrong. The increase was 533,000 square miles and 29 per cent, as you say.

We are reporting this in the paper tonight and will correct the online article also.”

I trust I will receive a similar response to my recent email to the Managing Editor of the Telegraph about the same issue. Then perhaps we can start discussing all the other inaccuracies concerning sea ice in the Arctic that both papers have published recently?

Here’s a screenshot of my comment:

Christopher Booker learns that in fact the Arctic sea ice IS still melting.
Christopher Booker learns that in fact the Arctic sea ice IS still melting.

 

Here’s what the revised version of David Rose’s article of September 8th now looks like:

The Mail's modifed message about Arctic sea ice
The Mail’s modifed message about Arctic sea ice

Along with this “explanation” in a sidebar:

2013-09-28_2341_Mail_NSIDCFor Bob Ward’s version of events please see our recent article entitled “Humiliating Mistakes by David Rose“. As I put it in that article:

So… David Rose and the thousands who have republished his assertions across the planet never cottoned on to the physical implausibilty of their headline “statistic”, and never bothered to contact the NSIDC to check?

What do you suppose is the probability that the rest of “the climate science” in Rose’s recent articles is similarly flawed?

Humiliating Mistakes by David Rose

Extent,

Today’s headline paraphrases slightly the title of a recent blog post by Bob Ward, who is Policy and Communications Director of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the Grantham Research Institute. In that article Bob finally provides an answer to the question that’s been troubling us about how David Rose arrived at his preposterous “Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year” bullet point in his article published two weeks ago in the Mail on Sunday.

Mr. Rose never responded to any of my communications, but according to Bob:

Rose told me by e-mail that the source of his claim that the ice extent was 60 per cent higher this year was an announcement posted on the website of the United States National Snow and Ice Data Center on 4 September: “August 2013 ice extent was 2.38 million square kilometers (919,000 square miles) above the record low August extent in 2012.

The NSIDC confirmed to me yesterday that the main figure used by Rose for his article was mistyped and that the mistake was corrected on 10 September, showing that Arctic sea extent in August 2013 was only 29 per cent higher than was recorded for the same month last year.

In an email to me yesterday, Natasha Vizcarra, the media liaison for NSIDC, stated:

“When we published the report, it contained a typographical error in the difference between the August 2013 monthly ice extent and the record low August extent in 2012 (and the corresponding square mile conversions). If you subtract the August 2012 extent of 4.72 million square kilometres from the August 2013 extent of 6.09 million square kilometers, you get 1.38 million square kilometers, not 2.38 million square kilometers. Our readers noticed the error and we corrected the typographical error on September 10. There are no plans to make a statement on the change because it was not an error in the data.”

So it seems the raw data was correct, the graph displayed to the left of the “typographical error” on the NSIDC web site was correct, and yet the Mail’s “Arctic expert” David Rose and the thousands who have republished his assertions across the planet never cottoned on to the physical implausibilty of their headline “statistic”, and never bothered to contact the NSIDC to check?

What do you suppose is the probability that the rest of “the climate science” in Rose’s recent articles is similarly flawed? Here’s another bit of simple arithmetic he evidently managed to get wrong:

100 * 2.38 / 4.72 = 50.4%

The “Polar Polynya” Reappears!

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Whatever David Rose may say in the Mail on Sunday, satellite images from high above the Arctic make it abundantly clear that there is in fact no “unbroken ice sheet [that] already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.”

Should further confirmation of that fact be needed, here’s our latest video analysis of the Arctic “refreeze” thus far:

The Great White Con – Update 1 from Jim L. Hunt on Vimeo.

As our video update points out, if you look carefully at the Arctic sea ice concentration maps derived from AMSR2 data, the large “Polar Polynya” visible is the region of the North Pole earlier this month seemed to be shrinking to nothing following the (provisional) NSIDC 2013 extent minimum on September 13th. However it now seems to have been given a new lease of life, as has the nearby “Barents Bite” of open water north of 85 degrees latitude.

That area of the Arctic is currently obscured by cloud, but here’s an image captured by the Aqua satellite earlier today of the “broken ice sheet” off “Russia’s northern shores”:

The Arctic sea ice edge off "Russia’s northern shores" from the Aqua satellite
The Arctic sea ice edge off “Russia’s northern shores” (Click for larger version)

Image courtesy of NASA Worldview from from the Aqua satellite.

Can you by any chance spot any cracks and/or holes in the supposedly “unbroken ice sheet”? Can you spot “Russia’s northern shores” for that matter?

In conclusion, for the moment at least, please note that we are now collecting all these periodical updates together in one handy location.

Mail Online Moderation Policy

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Over recent months I have made a wide variety of comments on some of David Rose’s articles published on The Mail Online. Around half of them never saw the light of day.

Here is some recent correspondence about this controversial issue:

Them:

Thank you for your email, and my apologies for the delay in the reply. I have looked into your account to see why your comments are not being published. Out of the 12 comments that you have submitted six have been published. The other comments were not published because they contain a URL to an external website/ blog, which breaks our house rules.

Rule 9: No linking or copyright infringement – You must not insert links to websites (URLs) or submit content which would be an infringement of copyright.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/house_rules.html

I hope that this answers your question on the publication of your comments. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me directly and I will be able to help you.

Regards

Me:

Thanks for your admittedly belated reply.

Please explain to me how linking to an article I myself wrote is in any way an infringement of anyone’s copyright.

Please also explain to me how a comment of mine that contained no links somehow never managed to make it out of your moderation queue.

http://econnexus.org/the-strange-tale-of-the-mail-and-the-snow-dragon/

Thanks in advance.

Them:

Thanks for your email. The house rules state that you must not insert any links, of any sort. The reason that your other comment was rejected was because it was directing our readers to your website, albeit by not adding the link, but still advertising your website by trying to get round our filters.

I hope this answers your questions.

Regards

Me:

Thanks for that additional information, but it doesn’t answer all my questions. In fact it raises some more.

“The house rules state that you must not insert any links, of any sort”

In that case I suggest you clarify your house rules. Your rule 9 currently states that:

“You must not insert links to websites (URLs) or submit content which would be an infringement of copyright.”

Which reads to me like “You must not insert links to websites which would be an infringement of copyright.” Maybe an extra comma would be sufficient?

“The reason that your other comment was rejected was because it was directing our readers to your website, albeit by not adding the link, but still advertising your website by trying to get round our filters.”

Your rule 7 states that:

“You must not use our Site for the promotion of any products or services or for any other commercial purpose”

As the URL suggests, econnexus.org is not for profit and has no commercial purpose. It does indirectly “advertise” the likes of charities such as ShelterBox however. Your house rules don’t forbid people from searching the web for further information on the topic(s) of an article do they? I can therefore see no reason why my comment on David Rose’s “Great Green Con #1” was in violation of your house rules. As I explained in my associated blog post, I was in fact endeavouring to find a way to bring to the attention of your readers the content of this URL

http://portal.inter-map.com/#mapID=49&groupID=297&z=1.0&up=-310610.7&left=2001105.4

which seemed to me to be perfectly fair comment on David Rose’s article. It’s not possible to post images in comments on The Mail Online either is it? How do you suggest I go about putting such relevant information in front of your readers in future, short of building my own authoritative web site full of relevant images on a controversial topic and then contacting the Press Complaints Commission about it?

GreatWhiteCon.info is also not for profit, and carries no advertising of any sort, direct or indirect. Since it seems a direct link is forbidden by your ambiguously worded house rules, how about the phrase “Great White Con dot info” in a comment on The Mail Online for example? For your information the following comment of mine on there doesn’t seem to have fallen foul of your eagle eyed moderators yet, and has even received a certain amount of approbation from your loyal readership:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html?offset=0&max=100#comment-37694863

Can I take it that using that form of words is acceptable to The Mail? I would appreciate a prompt response, since based on past performance I anticipate that you will be closing the comments section below David Rose’s most recent “economical” article in the near future.

Best wishes

Them:

Thanks for your email. I have no suggestions as to how you can get our readers to your site. I can advise you also that your comment:

“Whatever the David and Judy show may proclaim today, the facts of the matter are that the increase in Arctic sea ice extent compared to “this time last year” was just HALF of what David Rose said in The Mail on Sunday this time last week. For more information please visit:

Great White Con dot Info”

Was rejected and is not live on our site, so no, in answer to your question, it is not possible to try and get around advertising by writing a link out in words.

There isn’t really much more that I can add to what I have already said. I do hope that if nothing else, I have been able to give you some clarity on why your comments have been rejected.

Regards

Me:

I’m still confused I’m afraid. Just to try and clarify matters, something along the lines of:

“For more info try googling: david rose economical with the truth”

is OK with the Mail’s moderators, but:

“For more information please visit: Great White Con dot Info”

is not, even though GreatWhiteCon.info is an authority about the topic under discussion, and is in no way commercial? Have I got that straight now?

Best wishes

Them:

I would allow neither of those comments.

Regards

Me:

But why not? As far as I can see neither of them contradict the letter of your house rules, and both conform to both the letter and spirit of your rule 1, which states:

“We welcome your opinions. We want our readers to see and understand different points of view. Try to contribute to the thread, rather than just stating if you agree or disagree…. Please explain why you hold your opinion.”

Best wishes

Them:

What you are asking our readers to do is to go to your  website which essentially calls our journalist a “liar”. If you want readership for your website I can only suggest thinking up other ways of getting it.

Regards

Me:

You totally fail to understand the point I am attempting to make. After less than a week GreatWhiteCon.info already has a considerable readership. Check out the comments.

The point is that none of them (or certainly very few) found out about it via the Mail Online, despite your rule 1.

Best wishes

Them:

I have received no further reply. I can only assume that comments must now be closed on this topic.