Tag Archives: CO2

Carbon Dioxide

Jim Steele and Anthony Watts Embrace Bad Arctic Science

Maintaining my New Year’s resolution to expose bad Arctic pseudo-science on (a)social media I stumbled upon this from the self confessed “skeptic” Jim Steele on XTwitter. Jim’s paid Elmo for a blue tick and is rather verbose, but these extracts will give you the flavour of his ramblings:

How Bogus Arctic Warming Attribution Enabled the Climate Crisis Scam

Abnormal warming over the Arctic Ocean and Arctic sea ice loss has been falsely blamed on rising CO2 and evidence of the climate crisis. Such alarmist graphic propaganda is common, like Yale 360’s emphasizing the Arctic Ocean’s warming of several degrees in November 2022, while ignoring the cooling over North America and Eurasia. But any critical thinking person can see warm Arctic temperatures are due to inflows of warm Atlantic water, NOT rising CO2…

The 1990s shift in wind directions caused by the natural Arctic Oscillation, drove out much of the Arctic’s thick multi-year sea ice which resulted in thinner annual sea ice which allowed more heat to ventilate and warm the Arctic (see peer-reviewed Rigor (2002) & (2004)). As the natural Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation shifts to more northern hemisphere cooling, a decrease in the flow of warming tropical Atlantic water entering the Arctic, a rebound in insulating Arctic sea ice will occur that will simultaneously decrease Arctic temperatures.

People who understand these natural climate dynamics that affect the Arctic, always and quickly understand the bogus global warming crisis is driven by natural Arctic warming oscillations.

Needless to say my critical thinking Arctic alter ego felt an urgent need to quibble with Jim’s (almost) unevidenced assertions.

As is often the case with such skeptical “arguments”, the ancient academic articles quoted don’t actually support the conclusions. “Snow White” attempted to raise the matter with Jim:

Continue reading Jim Steele and Anthony Watts Embrace Bad Arctic Science

The 11th Key Science Moment of 2016

A brief history of scientific “churnalism” in the age of social media. The “post-truth” of The Guardian’s 11th Key Science Moment of 2016.

On November 7th 2016 we broke this astonishing news on Twitter:

Nobody noticed! Then on November 16th 2016 Zack Labe did likewise:

The story got some legs. Zack got pushback from some “skeptics” and then the AGU blogged about the story.:

My attention was called to this issue last week thanks to the Twitter feed of Zack Labe, a PhD student in Earth Systems Science at the University of California – Irvine. He makes great graphics showing the latest data on polar climate.

Then he got interviewed by the AGU. The AGU linked back to the graphic graphic in question in the clouds at Google, but there was no mention of our November 6th article or the real source of the story. The Arctic Sea Ice Forum (ASIF for short).

It’s now December 18th, and as far as I’m aware that remains the case in the mainstream media (MSM for short). The Arctic Sea Ice Forum grew out the earlier Arctic Sea Ice Blog (ASIB for short). The proprietor of both the ASIB and ASIF has been revealed by CBC to be one Neven Curlin. They recently interviewed Neven, and even gave him top billing above Sir David Attenborough in the resulting podcast:

‘Like watching a train wreck’: Blogger quits writing about climate change

However the title of the CBC article is inaccurate, as CBC would surely have noticed if they’d read Neven’s article on the ASIB on the topic of his “sabbatical”.

Sabbatical (I hope)

Now comes news that the “astonishingly low level” of global sea ice area that we brought to the waiting world’s attention on November 7th has today been chosen by The Guardian as one of their:

12 key science moments of 2016

The story outlined above and the associated graphic graphic are conspicuous only by their absence, but the Grauniad have thoughtfully provided this pretty stock photo of some sea ice:

Scroll down the Guardian’s article to number 11, pausing to read Tamsin Edwards’ section on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at number 9 on the way down (unlike CO₂ concentrations). There you will discover Professor Andrea Sella’s opinion that:

In October, unprecedented weather patterns drove icy winds across Siberia, pushing Arctic temperatures up to 20C above normal and parts of the Arctic Ocean failed to refreeze; in the Antarctic, sea ice thawed faster than usual. For me the bombshell came from a Dutch blogger in late November: a plot of the Arctic plus Antarctic showed sea ice this autumn to be tracking 4m km2 (the size of western Europe) below the normal average. This is a 7-sigma event – with a chance of about one in a hundred billion of being random. The ice doesn’t lie. If we don’t take this seriously now, our children will ask us why.

The “plot of the Arctic plus Antarctic” Andrea refers to was created by “Wipneus”, who I suppose could reasonably be described as a “Dutch programmer”. Neven could reasonably be described as a blogger, although he is much more than that. Although he was born in The Netherlands he no longer lives there.

Here’s the current state of play:

nsidc_global_area_20161215-400

Are your children asking “Why?” yet?

Should anybody wish to pose that question on Twitter please see:

Claim – Arctic Sea Ice Holds Firm?

Today’s Arctic sea ice claim comes from the Bishop Hill blog of Andrew Montford, which recently stated that:

This morning’s story appears to be the hoary old “Arctic sea ice in freefall” one.

“The Arctic is in crisis. Year by year, it’s slipping into a new state, and it’s hard to see how that won’t have an effect on weather throughout the Northern Hemisphere,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the Colorado-based NSIDC.”

As usual on these occasions, I take a quick look at the Cryosphere Today anomaly page, where I find the sea ice apparently still stuck firmly in “pause” mode.

seaice.anomaly.-20160328

Having inadvertently wended my way onto The Bishop’s Hill via the northerly extension to Eli’s Rabett Warren I felt compelled, as usual, to quibble with Andrew’s “apparently firmly in ‘pause’ mode” claim. Since graphs in comments are not available over on The Hill, or The Rabett Run for that matter, let’s take a look at some graphic representations of the available data over here instead. Commenter “Golf Charlie” asks at The Bishop’s:

With CO₂ levels continuing to rise, why hasn’t temperature risen, and the ice disappeared as predicted?

Let’s see shall we? CO₂ levels are indeed continuing to rise:

Keeling-20160330

Temperature has risen, as predicted:

2015-berk1

Arctic amplification is occuring, as predicted:

Time series of Arctic surface temperature in winter (Dec/Jan/Feb)
Time series of Arctic surface temperature in winter (Dec/Jan/Feb)

Arctic sea ice is disappearing, as predicted:

CT-20160330

CT-Max-2016-Final

Q.E.D?

Our Guardian’s Sleeping on the Job

Here’s a copy of an email I sent to James Randerson et.al. over at The Guardian shortly after my mail to The Mail earlier this week:

Us:

Shock news about Arctic sea ice!

Hello James,

Further to our telephone conversation just now, here is the latest “shock news” from the Arctic, hot off the presses down here at Ivory Towers:

https://greatWhiteCon.info/2014/03/the-arctic-sea-ice-recovery-vanishes/

Particularly in view of the recent inclement weather in this neck of the woods, I thought perhaps you might be interested in taking a closer look at the most recent evidence concerning this “hot topic”?

I hope you enjoy your meeting!

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt
AKA “Snow White”!

Them:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for drawing our attention to the blog. It is not a topic that we’re planning something on imminently, but it is something we are certainly keeping an eye on and will come back to in future.

Many thanks for your interest.

Best wishes,

James

Meanwhile over on Twitter:

Us:

 

Them:
We’ll keep you posted!

New Mail for The Mail

Now seems like an entirely appropriate time to bring the latest “Shock News!” from the Arctic to the attention of the “mass media” here in once Great Britain. Here’s a copy of an email I sent to John Wellington over at The Mail earlier today:

Us:

Re: PCC – Global cooling in an ideal world

Hello again John,

Further to our previous correspondence on this controversial topic here is the latest “shock news” from the Arctic, hot off the presses down here at Ivory Towers:

https://greatWhiteCon.info/2014/03/the-arctic-sea-ice-recovery-vanishes/

In view of the recent inclement weather in this neck of the woods, perhaps you could forward it on to one of your finest investigative reporters for me?

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

Them:

It’s now March 15th 2014, and this morning I received a “Dear Jim” note from John:

Dear Jim,

Nice to hear from you and I trust you were not hit by the West Country floods, climate-influenced or not.

I have discussed your message with a colleague who is interested in these things and we conclude that March is a little early in the year to be drawing significant conclusions. I have been shown some different graphs that appear to show 2014 is not dissimilar to the last few years. I am attaching these for your information.

Best regards

John

S_stddev_timeseries N_bm_extent cryo_compare_small ssmi1_ice_ext_small

Us:

Dear John,

Thank you for your kind words. We’re situated halfway up Haldon, so we avoided the worst of the inclement weather. The top of the hill took a bit of a battering however.

The entrance to Haldon Forest Park on February 24th 2014
The entrance to Haldon Forest Park on February 24th 2014

Haldon Forest Park on March 8th 2014
Haldon Forest Park on March 8th 2014

Our garden suffered a bit too, but thankfully the house was OK.

A new spring gushes from the side of Haldon Hill on Valentine's day 2014
A new spring gushes from the side of Haldon Hill on Valentine’s Day 2014

Others weren’t quite so fortunate:

http://econnexus.org/the-weather-report-from-soggy-south-west-england/

Regarding your own attachments, perhaps in the first instance you might ask your colleague to explain why he or she chooses to send you a NORSEX Arctic sea ice extent graph rather than one from the NSIDC, which I believe we established last summer is The Mail’s oracle on such matters? Please take a good look at the latest NSIDC equivalent to the Antarctic extent graph you sent me, which I attach for your convenience.

NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent graph for March 13th 2014
NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent graph for March 13th 2014

Whilst you’re at it perhaps you could also ask your colleague to answer at least the first three of these simple questions:

https://greatWhiteCon.info/2014/03/some-sceptical-questions/

You may also wish to pass on to your colleague the shock news that earlier this week the daily atmospheric carbon dioxide readings from Mauna Loa rose above 400 ppm almost 2 months earlier than last year?

https://greatWhiteCon.info/2014/03/our-guardians-sleeping-on-the-job/

Best wishes,

Jim

We’ll keep you posted!