Tag Archives: David Rose

Has the Arctic Ice Cap Expanded for the Second Year in Succession?

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According to David Rose’s latest article in the Mail on Sunday it has. This came as shock news to me, because only a couple of days ago I was discussing with “Steve Goddard” how Arctic sea ice extent (using “Steve’s” patent pending personal “DMI 30% clone” metric) had actually decreased since the same time last year!

Before we delve deep into the data, and before the Mail on Sunday makes any “corrections” to David’s misleadingly purple prose, here’s how things look over there at the moment:

 

Them:

2014-08-31_MoS RoseMoS-20140831

As you can see, the Mail’s main claims are:

  • Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore’s warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
  • An area twice the size of Alaska – America’s biggest state – was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
  • These satellite images taken from University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

not to mention that:

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012.

For some strange reason David neglects to include any numbers for 2013, so….

 

Us:

A quick telephone call revealed that John Wellington doesn’t work at the Mail on Sunday’s, so I sent him an email instead:

Hello again John,

David Rose is at it again, hence so am I. According to his latest words of wisdom:

“The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession”

I don’t suppose David and/or the Mail on Sunday can provide any data to back up that assertion can they?

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

Hello Jim,

I did wonder if we would be corresponding, again.
I will be in touch after the weekend.

Best regards

John

 

Us:

Hi Tessa,

I’m working on the assumption that you are still responsible for this subject. If not perhaps you can pass this email on to the relevant person?

David Rose is talking about the Arctic on the Mail Online again, so I’m attempting to comment again. Yet again I can’t see my comments (under the nom de guerre “SoulSurfer”) anywhere underneath the article in question. Can you look into it please, and let me know what the problem is?

To make things easier for you I’ve just commented for the third time this morning, as per the enclosed attachment.

Thanks,

Jim Hunt

2014-08-31_1347_MoS

Them:

In an email dated September 6th 2014:

Dear Jim,

Sorry not to reply sooner. The article relied on data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre comparing ice cover on the same date, August 25. In 2012 the figure was 3.91m sq miles, in 2013 it was 5.59m and in 2014, 5.62m. You may wish to note that the article did point out that the long-term trend is still downward.

Best regards

John

 

Us:

In an email dated January 24th 2015:

Dear John,

Sorry not to reply sooner. The PCC decided to laboriously mutate into something called IPSO right around the time of the 2014 Arctic sea ice minimum extent. Hence the brief hiatus. However David Rose is at it again, and he’s now even discussing tricky things like “probabilities”! IPSO do now seem to be getting their act together as well. Did you see their “open letter to publishers” last month?

No doubt I will have more than a few bones to pick with David’s article last weekend, not to mention the subsequent one by Victoria Woollaston. Is that one your responsibility too? For the moment though, perhaps we can pick up where we left off last summer?

Thanks for your information about the long term Arctic sea ice trend and the NSIDC extent numbers. However the article in question also states:

“Figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres”.

Where did David get those DMI numbers from? I asked the DMI, and even they didn’t seem to know!

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

In the absence of any response from John I called the Mail offices on January 26th 2015. It seems John is out of the office for the next two weeks. His PA is now looking into matters for me.

 

Us:

I sent a further email to John and Poppy on February 2nd 2015:

Them:

Dear Jim,

If you have a complaint about last Sunday’s article, you should set out exactly what it is. If you disagree with any opinions expressed you are welcome to write a letter that we will consider for publication.

You mention that you have sent us a number of inquiries recently. The only other, to my knowledge is that you wanted to know the source of some data that David Rose mentioned in an article some months ago. David Rose told me it came from the official website. Perhaps my colleague Poppy Hall can find it for you since David is probably unwilling to help after your insult.

Best regards,

John

 

Us:

Dear Poppy (and John)

Please would you ask David to let me know where exactly, and on which “official website”, he obtained the DMI extent numbers he quoted in his article last Summer?

FYI John, at Poppy’s suggestion I have also emailed the editorial team @MailOnline. They have yet to even acknowledge receipt of my email of January 26th.

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

Dear Jim,

David is unable to find the table with the numerical data. But he says that the graph here from the DMI website makes it clear that if you look at 30% concentration, the figures he gave were correct.

I hope this answers your query.

Kind regards,

Poppy

MailRoseDMI-001
 

Us:

Dear Poppy,

Just to clarify, the facts of the matter are that David Rose did NOT obtain the DMI numbers he quoted last summer from a “table with the numerical data” on an “official website”?

Best wishes,

Jim Hunt

 

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

The Arctic Surf Forecast For Late August 2014

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Regular readers adept at reading between lines may already have concluded that here in the Great White Con Ivory Towers we have been surreptitiously organising the world’s first ever Arctic Basin Big Wave Fantasy Surfing Contest (or GWCABBWFSC for short). Today we are proud to announce that the long waiting period may now be almost over!

Here is the long range Arctic weather forecast from GFS 192 hours from now (courtesy of MeteoCiel):

gfsnh-0-192-20140819

and here is the ECMWF equivalent:

ECH1-192-20140819

There looks to be a certain amount of agreement there, so now let’s take a look at ECMWF for T+240h:

ECH1-240-20140819

If the forecast pans out (a very big IF this far out!) there’s an Arctic storm brewing with the isobars packed tight over all the open water in the Laptev Sea, pushing the potential swell through the East Siberian Sea and on into the Beaufort Sea before it crashes against the northernmost shores of North America.

We fondly imagine a Great White Con team containing the likes of Andrew Cotton:

Garrett McNamara:

and Maya Gabeira:

taking on the biggest waves ever recorded on camera off Alaska’s North Slope, each clad in their respective sponsors’ thickest, finest neoprene.

The opposing “Great Green Con” team will be composed of volunteers from amongst the serried ranks of fiddlers with the facts on Fleet Street such as Andrew Neil, David Rose and Christopher Booker, all clad in matching Polar Bear suits to keep the cold Arctic waters at bay:

SurfBearTo coin a phrase oft used in this particular portion of the blogosphere:

We’ll keep you posted!

“Steve Goddard” Reveals How David Rose Misled Mail Readers!

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Shock News! In an astonishing revelation over on “Steven Goddard’s” (un)Real Science blog a commenter has revealed exactly how David Rose pulled the wool over the eyes of millions of Mail on Sunday readers last September.

I was eagerly engaged in a “debate” about “The Arctic Catastrophe” with Steve/Tony and his band of merry (mostly) men when the conversation took an unexpectedly enlightening turn:

Them:

If you have eleven minutes to spare, there is a movie made of all last summer’s pictures taken by O-Buoy 7. It gives you something to compare this summer with. It is a little annoying because the ice got slushy and the camera gradually tilted. You may get a crick in your neck, if your head tilts as you watch. Finally you spend around four minutes basically looking at your feet, but the redeeming thing is that the ice cracks up and you are looking at the edge of the water. Then you fall in. You are blown south and bob about in ice-free waters briefly, before the refreeze swallows you up in advancing ice, and you get to see winter set in:

http://obuoy.datatransport.org/monitor#buoy7/movie

 

Us:

Caleb – Here’s an O-Buoy 7 movie I hurriedly put together in October last year, that also shows winter setting in. Since you’re evidently an “Arctic sea ice nutter” too I’d be very interested to hear your comments:

The Great White Con – Update 3 from Jim L. Hunt on Vimeo.

 

Them:

In that particular case you apparently did catch a reporter making a mistake. He likely took a quick glance at an extent map, and didn’t dig deeper. Some of those maps show all “extent”, even down to 15% ice and 85% water, as solid white. (For example, this map:  )

NSIDC high resolution Arctic sea ice extent visualisation on August 16th 2014
NSIDC high resolution Arctic sea ice extent visualisation on August 16th 2014

Because the map shows pure white, the reporter likely jumped to the wrong conclusion that the ice was “Unbroken.” Then it is likely a week passed between when he researched and the piece was printed, and further ice melted during that week.

It is not hard to catch the MSM making such mistakes about sea-ice. Either they are in too much of a hurry, or are lazy, or perhaps have an agenda. The best thing to do is to gently and politely educate them to what the actual facts are. In some cases they really do not know that what is solid white on the map can be as much as 85% open water in reality. Some actually appreciate you doing the research they don’t have the time (or are too lazy) to do.

But make sure you educate them with actual facts. If you feed them bull, and they catch you at it, they never forget it and very rarely forgive it, even if you confess and apologize.

 

Us:

I have made it my mission in life to educate all and sundry with actual facts!

If David Rose appreciates me doing all this research on his behalf he has been remarkably backward in coming forward to convey his eternal gratitude 😥

 

 

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

 

 

Shock News! Murdoch Plagiarises David Rose Errors

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Regular readers may recall that on September 8th 2013 the Mail on Sunday published an article by David Rose claiming that the Arctic “Ice Sheet Grew 920,000 Square Miles in a Year“. That was not true, and after we complained to the UK Press Complaints Commission The Mail eventually published a “correction” of sorts.

On September 15th 2013 the Mail on Sunday published another article by David Rose entitled “Global warming is just HALF what we thought: World’s top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong”, which proudly displayed their erroneous headline from the previous week. The article contained many more errors,  some of which the United Kingdom’s Met Office highlighted on their official blog later the same day:

The article states that the Met Office’s ‘flagship’ model (referring to our Earth System Model known as HadGEM2-ES) is too sensitive to greenhouse gases and therefore overestimates the possible temperature changes we may see by 2100.

There is no scientific evidence to support this claim.

The Mail eventually “corrected” the article in their usual half hearted fashion, whilst simultaneously updating the title to read “Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought“, which doesn’t strike me as being an accurate use of the English language let alone scientifically accurate.

Meanwhile on September 16th 2013 on the other side of the planet Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian published an article written by Graham Lloyd entitled “We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC“, saying things like:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment reportedly admits its computer drastically overestimated rising temperatures, and over the past 60 years the world has in fact been warming at half the rate claimed in the previous IPCC report in 2007. More importantly, according to reports in British and US media, the draft report appears to suggest global temperatures were less sensitive to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide than was previously thought. The 2007 assessment report said the planet was warming at a rate of 0.2C every decade, but according to Britain’s The Daily Mail the draft update report says the true figure since 1951 has been 0.12C.

After a long drawn out enquiry the Australian Press Council has finally announced that in its view The Australian cannot justify publishing inaccurate scientific information by blaming David Rose and The Mail on Sunday. They state that:

The Press Council has considered a complaint about a number of items published in The Australian in September 2013, a week before the release of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Council has considered the complaint by reference to the following parts of its General Principles: “Publications should take reasonable steps to ensure reports are accurate, fair and balanced”; “relevant facts should not be misrepresented or suppressed”; and “Where it is established that a serious inaccuracy has been published, a publication should promptly correct the error, giving the correction due prominence.”

The Council has concluded that the erroneous claim about the revised warming rate was very serious, given the importance of the issue and of the need for accuracy (both of which were emphasised in the editorial that repeated the claim without qualification). Although based on another publication’s report, the claim was unequivocally asserted in The Australian headline, “We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC”, which also implied the IPCC had acknowledged the alleged error. The impression that the claim was correct was reinforced by The Australian saying the IPCC had been “forced to deny” that it was in crisis talks.

The Council considers rigorous steps should have been taken before giving such forceful and prominent credence to The Mail on Sunday’s claim. Accordingly, the complaint on that ground is upheld.

The Council welcomes the acknowledgements of error and expressions of regret which the publication eventually made to it. But they should have been made very much earlier, and made directly to the publication’s readers in a frank and specific manner. It is a matter of considerable concern that this approach was not adopted.

To summarise, don’t believe everything you read in The Daily Mail or The Australian, particularly if the words in question are written by or plagiarised from David Rose:

 

Recursive Fury From David Rose?

Censorship, , ,

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.

According to an article in yesterday’s Guardian about the controversy:

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:

Stephan Lewandowsky: In Whose Hands the Future? from Peter Sinclair on Vimeo.

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:

Us:

Them:

We’ll keep you posted!

A Conversation With David Rose

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Perhaps “conversation” is somewhat too strong a word? We have somehow managed to engage the Mail on Sunday’s top investigative journalist (AKA David Rose) in a debate about sea ice on Twitter. For some strange reason he tried to change the topic from the Arctic to the Antarctic!

Us:

Them:

 

Us:

Meanwhile we gatecrashed another debate that David Rose was gatecrashing, about a topic we have some experience with.

Them:

Us:


We’ll keep you posted!

Has Arctic Sea Ice Already Started to Recover?

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In a word, NO!! Here we go again.

Them:

According to David Rose’s headline in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday:

Global warming ‘pause’ may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover.

There is of course plenty more where that came from, such as:

The 17-year pause in global warming is likely to last into the 2030s and the Arctic sea ice has already started to recover, according to new research.

A paper in the peer-reviewed journal Climate Dynamics – by Professor Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Dr Marcia Wyatt – amounts to a stunning challenge to climate science orthodoxy.

Not only does it explain the unexpected pause, it suggests that the scientific majority – whose views are represented by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – have underestimated the role of natural cycles and exaggerated that of greenhouse gases.

along with a:

Graph that makes a mockery of warming

Us:

If you take a look at the evidence from the NSIDC the Mail on Sunday recently provided us with in support of their previous inaccurate headlines you will discover it says:

Monthly August ice extent for 1979 to 2013 shows a decline of 10.6% per decade.

QED? Apparently not as far as the Mail on Sunday’s concerned. If further evidence is needed please read our previously published “stunning challenge” to Judith Curry’s Arctic sea ice expertise. In brief:

Judith Curry republishes the same nonsense [as The Mail], but then neglects to publish even a similarly mealy mouthed “correction”, let alone anything remotely resembling the information originally published by the NSIDC upon which this collective fantasy is allegedly based. Therefore Judith should be taken seriously, and as a climate scientist rather than a tabloid journalist or a fantasy fiction writer?

We think not.

Them:

David Rose goes on to say (amongst other things) that:

The graph shown above, based on a version published by Dr Ed Hawkins of Reading University on his blog, Climate Lab Book, reveals that actual temperatures are now below the predictions made by almost all the 138 models on which the IPCC relies.

The pause means there has been no statistically significant increase in world average surface temperatures since the beginning of 1997, despite the models’ projection of a steeply rising trend.

Us:

On Dr. Hawkins’ blog, commenting on a previous David Rose article in the Mail on Sunday, he says this:

David Rose has written an article in the Mail on Sunday which, by eye, seems to use the top left panel from the figure below, but without mention of its original source. In the article David Rose suggests that this figure proves that the forecasts are wrong. This is incorrect.

Here’s the figure Dr. Hawkins is referring to:

Ed Hawkins original graphs comparing CMIP5 simulations with observations
Ed Hawkins’ original graphs comparing CMIP5 simulations with observations

Finally, for the moment at least, here’s the text of an email we sent to the Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday this morning:

Hello John,

Thanks for your additional comments. Unfortunately you still fail to address the primary question I’ve been asking for almost 2 months now, so I will be formally pursuing matters concerning the September 8th article via the PCC from now on.

Moving on I note that you have published another article by David Rose this weekend entitled “Global warming ‘pause’ may last for 20 more years and Arctic sea ice has already started to recover”, which mentions both Judith Curry and Arctic sea ice once again. I already have a few bones to pick with you about this one as well.

1. I posted an online comment on the article yesterday evening. It remains invisible this morning. Your web site says “The comments below have not been moderated.”. My comment included no links, although it did mention the “Great White Con”. Perhaps you could look into that for me, and provide me with an explanation?

2. Do you suppose it would be possible to persuade David to reveal his sources any more swiftly this time around? Where does his misleading graphic entitled “Graph that makes a mockery of warming” and the underlying data come from? At first sight it doesn’t seem to be from Judith Curry’s “Stadium wave” paper for example.

We have yet to receive a reply.

The Mail’s Concentration on Sea Ice Extent

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Further to our previous communications about what we refer to here as “The Great White Con” I have now received another email from John Wellington, Managing Editor of the Mail on Sunday.

Them:

Amongst other things it says that:

The incorrect figure published by the NSIDC was taken in good faith. Our writer [AKA David Rose] did not expect an institution of its stature to make such an error, so it is not reasonable to expect him to contact NSIDC to check it, specially as the general idea of an increase in the icepack was consistent with more anecdotal information such as the shipping information. You say we did not produce evidence of the NSIDC mistake. I am attaching a screen grab of their web site before they corrected it.

Mail on Sunday screen grab of NSIDC article entitled "A real hole near the pole"
Mail on Sunday screen grab of NSIDC article entitled “A real hole near the pole”

John’s latest email also included the following statement:

The August NSIDC report begins with a diagram (see  attachment). This shows the Arctic ice sheet stretching from Siberia to the Canadian islands:

Another Mail on Sunday screen grab of NSIDC "Arctic Sea Ice News" article of September 4th 2013
Another Mail on Sunday screen grab of NSIDC “Arctic Sea Ice News” article of September 4th 2013

Us:

You will note I have taken the liberty of annotating The Mail’s screen grabs with what seem to me to be reasonable questions for any vaguely competent investigative journalist to ask themselves when reading the NSIDC’s early September update. At this juncture I can only repeat this question from my most recent missive to The Mail:

This raises any number of questions about the Mail on Sunday misleading its readers, such as “Why didn’t The Mail ask the NSIDC about the apparently conflicting information, much like Bob Ward did, before publishing an article relying on that information?” not to mention “Why can’t David Rose perform accurate arithmetic?”

and provide my own screenshot from the “terminology” page of the NSIDC web site in a no doubt vain attempt to provide John and David with an answer to just one of those questions:

NSIDC explanation of the terms "concentration" and "extent"
NSIDC explanation of the terms “concentration” and “extent”

In brief:

Extent defines a region as either “ice-covered” or “not ice-covered.” For each data cell, it is a binary term; either the cell has ice (usually a value of “1”) or the cell has no ice (usually a value of “0”).

 Do you suppose that given their apparent difficulties in performing elementary arithmetic John and David are able to appreciate the difference between “1 or 0” and “low-concentration sea ice (20 to 80% cover) within our extent outline” or even “near-zero ice concentration“?

How about the readers of The Mail on Sunday, or the Press Complaints Commission for that matter?

The Balding Arctic Exposed

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I’ve recently received a letter signed by John Wellington who is the Managing Editor of The Mail on Sunday.

Them:

Referring to David Rose’s Mail on Sunday article of September 8th 2013 John says amongst many other things that:

We deny that the article was significantly inaccurate apart from the original headline figure which we have already corrected.

and:

In August, ice did stretch from part of the Siberian shore to the Canadian islands. The image published in the newspaper and online supports this statement as does the enclosed image from the NSIDC site which shows the ice extent on August 18.

Here’s that image, which comes from the August 19th 2013 edition of the National Snow and Ice Data Center’s “Arctic Sea Ice News” entitled “The balding Arctic“:

National Snow and Ice Data Center graphic showing Arctic sea ice extent on August 18th 2013
NSIDC graphic showing Arctic sea ice extent on August 18th 2013

Us:

I’m currently writing a reply to John’s letter. Amongst many other things it directs his attention to this very article and says:

Images showing sea ice “extent” reveal remarkably little about whether an “ice sheet” is “unbroken” or not. If that is what you want to illustrate then an image showing “concentration” is much more helpful. In their report of September 4th upon which David Rose’s article is supposedly based, at least in part, the NSIDC helpfully provided such an image. The Mail on Sunday didn’t publish that image, or a similar image from 2012. In order to correct this inaccuracy they should do so.

Since they’ve evidently read the NSIDC’s news that the Arctic was “Balding” towards the end of August and there was “A real hole near the pole” by early September John and David should be aware of this already, but it seems a refresher course is necessary. On August 19th the NSIDC pointed out that:

Satellite data from the AMSR-2 instrument and MODIS show an unusually large expanse of low-concentration sea ice (20 to 80% cover) within our extent outline (15% or greater, using the SSM/I sensor) spanning much of the Russian side of the Arctic and extending to within a few degrees of the North Pole.

While some of the low concentrations recorded by AMSR-2 may be due to surface melt on sea ice, the MODIS image confirms that a large region is covered by isolated floes.

On September 4th the NSIDC also helpfully pointed out that:

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.

Here is a “true-color” image from September 4th 2013 using MODIS bands 1, 4 and 3, helpfully made available by NASA to anyone who might be interested via the EOSDIS Worldview web site:

NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the North Pole area on September 4th 2013 derived from bands 1,4 and 3 of the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “true-color” image of the North Pole area on September 4th 2013 derived from bands 1, 4 and 3 of the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

The lines in this image converge on the North Pole, the same location as the little cross in the NSIDC extent image near the top of this article. Let’s play “Spot the Difference” yet again shall we. Would you say that the sea ice underneath the clouds looks “broken” in this Worldview “true-color” image? How about in the the University of Bremen concentration images often shown by the NSIDC, or in the NSIDC “extent” image above, or in the NASA “extent” videos so beloved by David Rose and the Mail on Sunday?

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.