Tag Archives: GWPF

The “political” Global Warming Policy Forum and/or the “charitable” Global Warming Policy Foundation

The GWPF Boldly Go Where Steve Koonin Feared To Tread

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My apologies for the mixed metaphors in today’s title, but the news I bear is beyond bizarre.

In a press release earlier today The Global Warming Policy Foundation proudly announced that:

A new paper by an eminent meteorologist says that trends in polar sea-ice levels give little cause for alarm. The paper, by Professor J. Ray Bates has just been published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

According to Professor Bates, climate model simulations indicate significantly decreasing sea ice levels in both hemispheres, with the greatest decreases occurring in September each year. However, the observed September trend in the Antarctic is actually slightly upwards, and while observed levels in the Arctic have fallen over the last 40 years, they have been quite stable since around 2007.

Professor Bates said:

“In 2007, Al Gore told us that Arctic sea ice levels were ‘falling off a cliff’. It’s clear now that he was completely wrong. In fact, the trends in sea-ice are an antidote to climate alarm.”

Professor Bates also says that little reliance should be placed on model simulations of future sea-ice decline:

“Climate models failed to predict the growth in Antarctic sea ice, and they missed the recent marked slowdown of sea-ice decline in the Arctic. It would be unwarranted to think they are going to get things right over the next 30 years.”

Professor Bates’ paper is published today, and can be downloaded here (pdf).

By all means download Ray’s “paper” from the link above and take a look at his introduction, which begins as follows:

The recent publication of the book Unsettled by Steven Koonin has led to the likelihood of increased scrutiny of the perception of a climate emergency,1 an idea which has become so widely established in recent years. Koonin, a former scientific advisor to the Obama administration, has demonstrated that what the public are being told by the media is not necessarily what the scientists are saying. He has also shown that what is being relayed in the national and UN climate assessments has often been written for the purpose of persuading rather than informing.

Unsettled clearly shows that important aspects of climate science, which the public have been persuaded to regard as beyond dispute are, in fact, quite unsettled.

Regular readers may recall that as soon as Steve’s book was published in machine readable format we established that it made no mention whatsoever of sea ice, whether of the Arctic or Antarctic variety.

Furthermore, when I attempted to debate that fact with Prof. Koonin he disappeared without trace before justifying that strange omission, beyond asserting that:

The topic is somewhat distant from ordinary folks’ perception.

It seems that Prof. Bates and the GWPF disagree with Prof. Koonin on this topic, since presumably their “paper” is addressed to ordinary folks? Ray even explicitly states that:

Although Unsettled covers a broad spectrum of climate topics, it does not treat in depth the issue of recent polar sea-ice trends, which are key indicators of changes in the global climate.

His “paper” goes on to assert in section 2 that:

Since the introduction of passive-microwave satellite observations in the late 1970s, polar sea-ice extent has been among the most accurately observed climate indicators. Sea-ice volume, on the other hand, is much more difficult to measure.

So far so good I suppose, but then we are told:

In December 2007, former US vice-president Al Gore, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, referred to scientific studies warning that the Arctic sea ice was ‘falling off a cliff’. He highlighted forthcoming model results that projected largely ice-free Arctic summers in ‘as little as seven years’. He repeated this warning two years later at the 2009 COP15 climate meeting in Copenhagen.

Gore’s claim was based on a study by researchers from the US Naval Postgraduate School, who used a regional model of the sea ice–ocean system in the Arctic, constrained using observational data for the 12-year period 1996–2007, and concluded that the Arctic would be nearly ice-free in summer by 2016 (plus or minus three years).

Prof. Bates seems blithely unaware that we thoroughly debunked this nonsense many moons ago. What Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski, one of those pesky “researchers from the US Naval Postgraduate School”, actually said in December 2007 was:

If we project this trend ongoing for the last 10–15 years, we probably will reach zero in summer some time mid next decade.

At the risk of repeating myself it seems I must once again:

Reiterate for the benefit of those who seem unable to understand either English or Mathematics that a “projection” is not the same thing as a “prediction”.

Ray then goes on to quibble with the NSIDC’s graph of September average Arctic sea ice extent:

preferring instead a version of his own construction, which looks like this:

Ray then confidently asserts that:

The current slowdown in the rate of sea-ice loss was not expected, and the reasons for it are uncertain.

Sadly Ray’s exhaustive list of references fails to mention this learned journal article from 2011 by authors from the University of Washington and Los Alamos National Laboratory, which not only anticipated such a “slow transition” but also offered reasons for it:

Given the strong thickness–growth feedback of sea ice (Bitz and Roe 2004), where in a warming climate we can expect the thicker MY ice to thin at a greater rate than the thinner FY ice, and the fact that the ratio of MY to FY ice entering into the MY ice category each year is decreasing, it is likely that the difference between FY and MY ice survival ratios will decrease in a warming climate. If this occurs, the Arctic sea ice system would move toward a regime of decreased memory and decreased sensitivity to climate forcing…

There is of course plenty more GWPF sea ice nonsense where that lot came from, but it’s already past my tea time (UTC) and so further debunking will have to wait a while. In the meantime here’s a wake up call for Professor J. Ray Bates:

[Edit – December 17th]

Moving further down section 2 Ray assures us that:

Any objective discussion of the recent Arctic sea-ice decline also requires that some consideration be given to the evidence regarding past natural variability on a multi-decadal timescale. In the pre-satellite era, reliable data on sea-ice coverage was sparse.

So far so good again? Not really! Ray’s gets on to his go to reference, Connolly, Connolly and Soon (2017):

By combining the temperature and partial sea-ice records, statistical reconstructions of the total sea-ice extent going back to the early 1900s can be created. Some of these reconstructions indicate that between the 1900s and 1940s, Arctic sea-ice extent comparable to the present reduced levels may have occurred.

Ray doesn’t sound very certain, which is perhaps because the paper in question blithely states that:

Because Arctic sea ice trends are closely correlated to Arctic temperature trends, they are often discussed in the context of global temperature trends.

Maybe so, but to the best of my recollection Connolly et al. never attempt to “prove” the asserted correlation. Here’s an alternative assessment of “Arctic sea-ice extent between the 1900s and 1940s“:

Watch this space!

Arctic Sea Ice Disinformation and COP26

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There isn’t a million more square kilometers of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year. Or is there?

For our younger readers perhaps I should point out that is a reference to the genesis of the Great White Con blog way back in the mists of time in September 2013, when a Daily Mail headline proudly, but erroneously, declared that:

And now it’s global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year.

Almost a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than in 2012

With the COP26 conference due to start in Glasgow on October 31st UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this to say to the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, amongst other things:

In the words of the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord “we are just old enough to get ourselves into serious trouble”…

It is time for humanity to grow up.

It is time for us to listen to the warnings of the scientists – and look at Covid, if you want an example of gloomy scientists being proved right – and to understand who we are and what we are doing.

The world – this precious blue sphere with its eggshell crust and wisp of an atmosphere – is not some indestructible toy, some bouncy plastic romper room against which we can hurl ourselves to our heart’s content.

Daily, weekly, we are doing such irreversible damage that long before a million years are up, we will have made this beautiful planet effectively uninhabitable – not just for us but for many other species.

And that is why the Glasgow COP26 summit is the turning point for humanity.

If all that sounds unlikely, then take a look:

https://youtu.be/Z_YPE7vy_wQ?t=27


As we surmised at the time of the recent G7 Summit in Cornwall:

Continue reading Arctic Sea Ice Disinformation and COP26 →

A Report on the State of the Arctic in 2017

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Our title for today is borrowed then modified from the title of a Global Warming Policy Foundation report entitled “The State of the Climate in 2016”. The associated GWPF press release assures us that:

A report on the State of the Climate in 2016 which is based exclusively on observations rather than climate models is published today.

Compiled by Dr Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography at the University Centre in Svalbard (Norway), the new climate survey is in sharp contrast to the habitual alarmism of other reports that are mainly based on computer modelling and climate predictions.

Prof Humlum said: “There is little doubt that we are living in a warm period. However, there is also little doubt that current climate change is not abnormal and not outside the range of natural variations that might be expected.

However it seems as though the sharp contrast to other reports is that the GWPF’s effort is evidently hot off their porky pie production line. By way of example, Prof. Humlum’s “white paper” is not “based exclusively on observations rather than climate models” nor is it “The World’s first” such “State of the Climate Survey”. As Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville pointed out on Watts Up With That of all places:

Ummm… I believe the Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS) annual State of the Climate report is also observation-based…been around many years.

Meanwhile on Twitter Victor Venema of the University of Bonn pointed out that:

and Mark McCarthy of the UK Met Office added that:

All in all there are several “alternative facts” in just the headline and opening paragraph of the GWPF’s press release, which doesn’t augur well for the contents of the report itself!

It’s no coincidence (IMHO!) that a day later the United States’ House Committee on Science, Space and Technology announced their planned hearing “show trial” on March 29th entitled “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method“:

Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 – 10:00am
Location: 2318 Rayburn House Office Building

Dr. Judith Curry

President, Climate Forecast Applications Network; Professor Emeritus, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. John Christy

Professor and Director, Earth System Science Center, NSSTC, University of Alabama at Huntsville; State Climatologist, Alabama

Dr. Michael Mann

Professor, Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr.

Professor, Environmental Studies Department, University of Colorado

John Christy doesn’t seem to have a Twitter account, but the other three “expert witnesses” announced there involvement, as revealed in this slideshow of learned (and not so learned!) comments on Twitter:

 

You may have noticed that in response to the GWPF’s propaganda I pointed them at a “State of the Arctic in 2017” report of my own devising which is in actual fact “based exclusively on observations rather than climate models” and looks like this:

NSIDC-Max-2017

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Bering Sea on March 22nd 2017, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Bering Sea on March 22nd 2017, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Kara Sea on March 22nd 2017, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite
NASA Worldview “false-color” image of the Kara Sea on March 22nd 2017, derived from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite

Synthetic aperture radar image of the Wandel Sea on March 21st 2017, from the ESA Sentinel 1B satellite
Synthetic aperture radar image of the Wandel Sea on March 21st 2017, from the ESA Sentinel 1B satellite

We feel sure that Lamar Smith and the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology won’t comprehend the significance of those observations, but will nonetheless be pleased to see the GWPF’s report become public knowledge shortly before their planned hearing next week.

We also feel sure they were pleased to view the contents of another recent “white paper” published under the GWPF banner. The author was ex Professor Judith Curry, and the title was “Climate Models for the Layman“. Lamar Smith et al. certainly seem to qualify as laymen, and Judith’s conclusion that:

There is growing evidence that climate models are running too hot and that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is at the lower end of the range provided by the IPCC.

will no doubt be grist to their climate science bashing mill next Wednesday. Unfortunately that conclusion is yet another “alternative fact” according to the non laymen.

This report, however, does little to help public understanding; well, unless the goal is to confuse public understanding of climate models so as to undermine our ability to make informed decisions. If this is the goal, this report might be quite effective.

That certainly seems to be the goal of the assorted parties involved, and consequently we cannot help but wonder if the David and Judy Show will put on another performance this coming Sunday morning? Paraphrasing William Shakespeare:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
Lamar Smith comes to bury Michael Mann, not to praise him

Don’t Panic! It’s Just Another Climategate 2 Correction!!

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Regular readers will be aware that the alleged “Global Warming Policy Forum” recently published what they describe with tongue in cheek as a “correction” to one of the many egregious inaccuracies published on their web site recently.

Last night the Mail Online web site followed suit by publishing an excuse for a “correction” to the self same egregious inaccuracy published on February 19th 2017 as part of David Rose’s self christened “Climategate 2” campaign in the Mail on Sunday. Here’s how I announced that momentous event to the waiting World:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/843235763206733827

and here’s how that version looked in virtual print last night:

MoS-20170318-Online

Now in actual fact I reported this particular inaccuracy to David Rose’s managing editor at the Mail on Sunday weeks ago. This morning I rushed down to the local paper shop to discover how the Mail’s apology for a “correction” looked in actual print. I searched in vain for a “climate change” story or even a “science” story with which it might have been associated, but I failed miserably.

I eventually located it hiding at the bottom of a story entitled “Troops trained by modern day Captain Mainwarings… at Barclays Bank HQ“, which looks like this:

MoS-20170319-DadsArmy

Allegedly:

They are an elite fighting force with proud history and a fearsome reputation for being among the toughest soldiers in the British Army.

But now, in an extraordinary military first, a battalion of the crack Parachute Regiment are to receive key aspects of their training from Barclays Bank.

The astonishing scheme has echoes of the classic sitcom Dad’s Army, in which hapless bank manager Captain Mainwaring attempted to whip his platoon into shape.

What a picture of Arthur Lowe has to do with that story, or “Climategate 2” for that matter, escapes me but nonetheless beneath that load of “investigative” churnalism the printed version of the Mail’s alleged “correction” looks like this:

MoS-20170319-Mono

One of the numerous problems with the Mail and the GWPF’s version of these recent events is that none of the UK Met Office insiders I have contacted have any idea what the Mail might be blathering on about:

Snow White’s very good friend Alice F. with her planet-wide patent pending hyper-sensitive wetware alternative facts detector is now on the case:

Alice's brain

Have no doubt about it. Alice’s little grey cells will get to the bottom of this mystery.

Watch this space!

Shock News! Finally, the GWPF Corrects a Mistake!!

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David Whitehouse has just published an article on the Global Warming Policy Forum web site entitled “How The Recent El Nino Saved Climate Models“.

The article itself is of course straight off the GWPF’s porky pie production line, but in the small print at the bottom there is this “Shock News!”:

Finally, we must correct a mistake. In February a scientist involved in the production of the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature data set told us what January’s figure was before its official publication. It turns out they were wrong, and we have corrected the graphs accordingly. Here is HadCRUT4, with its pause and recent El Nino peak.

GWPF-latestHadcrut4-20170313

When the HadCRUT4 data for 2016 was complete the MET Office estimated that 0.2°C was due to the El Nino. So here is that difference.

GWPF-HadcrutMinusElNino-20170313

A scientist involved in the production of the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature data set told us that once again David Whitehouse is mistaken:

Can we now expect David Rose to issue an even more abject apology in next weekend’s Mail on Sunday?

Climategate 2 – Episode 3 of David Rose’s Epic Saga

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This morning’s instalment of the Mail on Sunday’s serialisation of David Rose’s latest piece of fantasy fiction is headlined as follows:

“US Congress launches a probe into climate data that duped world leaders over global warming”

David is a bit slow on the uptake, since we reported on the “US Congress probe” several days ago. He also seems not to have taken on board any of the copious quantities of evidence that his “climate data that duped world leaders over global warming” allegations are the purest fantasy. This time around Mr. Rose claims, amongst other things:

Last week Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK Met Office, admitted that notwithstanding the Pausebuster, it was clear ‘the slowdown hasn’t gone away’.

The ‘pause’ is clearly visible in the Met Office’s ‘HadCRUT 4’ climate dataset, calculated independently of NOAA.

Let’s see if we can discover if Peter Stott has any recollection of being interviewed last week by the Mail on Sunday and/or The Mail’s leading fantasy fiction writer shall we?

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/833257983018672128

Here’s the HadCRUT 4 data we’ve been showing assorted “skeptical” fellows on Twitter this week:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/831835739222638592

Perhaps David Rose can assist them by pointing out where exactly the alleged “pause” is located?

 

[Edit – February 19th PM]

Peter Stott has confirmed my suspicions. David Rose’s “last week” was egregiously inaccurate:

https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/833389662953668610

In addition John Kennedy, also from the UK Met Office, pointed out to Mr. Rose that:

Do you suppose that David & Judy have another “whistleblower” embedded deep within the Hadley Centre?

 

[Edit – March 4th]

The UK Met Office have at long last published the HadCRUT4 January 2017 update:

A theory is proposed that doesn’t involve time travel:

https://twitter.com/GarethSJones1/status/838136044251975682

 

[Edit – March 18th]

The online version of the Mail on Sunday have just published a “correction” to the most egregious of their long list of recent errors and inaccuracies. It reads as follows:

On February 19 we reported a Met Office official’s announcement that the average global temperature in January 2017 was about the same as in January 1998. In fact, this was incorrect, and the temperature was 0.25C higher.

So there you have it. This buck doesn’t stop on David Rose’s desk, or Benny Peiser’s desk, or John Wellington’s desk, or Geordie Greig’s desk. We’re expected to believe it stops on an unidentified desk of an unknown official somewhere inside the UK Met Office.

We won’t get fooled again. Will we?

 

[Edit – March 19th]

The expert opinion of Peter Thorne (op. cit.) on the Mail on Sunday’s excuse for a “correction”:

Post-Truth Global and Arctic Temperatures

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“Post-truth” is the the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2016. The definition reads as follows:

post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

and according to Oxford Dictionaries:

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.

Our old friend David Rose has been remarkably quiet on the topic of Arctic sea ice recently. Presumably the objective facts from the Arctic are impossible to spin to his satisfaction even for a man of David’s talents? However that didn’t stop him from penning an article for The Mail on Sunday at the end of November on the topic of the recent “record highs in global temperatures“:

Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C since the middle of this year – their biggest and steepest fall on record.

The news comes amid mounting evidence that the recent run of world record high temperatures is about to end. The fall, revealed by Nasa satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere, has been caused by the end of El Niño – the warming of surface waters in a vast area of the Pacific west of Central America.

MoS2 Template Master

The Mail article helpfully included this one year old video from the World Meteorological Organization, explaining the basics of the El Niño phenomenon:

According to the commentary:

This phenomenon affects weather conditions across the equatorial Pacific, with potential knock on effects in other parts of the world.

We’ll get on to the “potential knock on effects” in the Arctic eventually, but let’s start with a snippet of Mr. Rose’s “post-truth politics”:

Some scientists, including Dr Gavin Schmidt, head of Nasa’s climate division, have claimed that the recent highs were mainly the result of long-term global warming.

Last year, Dr Schmidt said 2015 would have been a record hot year even without El Nino. ‘The reason why this is such a warm record year is because of the long-term underlying trend, the cumulative effect of the long-term warming trend of our Earth,’ he said. This was ‘mainly caused’ by the emission of greenhouse gases by humans.

Other experts have also disputed Dr Schmidt’s claims. Professor Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said yesterday: ‘I disagree with Gavin. The record warm years of 2015 and 2016 were primarily caused by the super El Nino.’ The slowdown in warming was, she added, real, and all the evidence suggested that since 1998, the rate of global warming has been much slower than predicted by computer models – about 1C per century.

David Whitehouse, a scientist who works with Lord Lawson’s sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the massive fall in temperatures following the end of El Nino meant the warming hiatus or slowdown may be coming back. ‘According to the satellites, the late 2016 temperatures are returning to the levels they were at after the 1998 El Nino. The data clearly shows El Nino for what it was – a short-term weather event,’ he said.

In case you’re wondering where the politics is in all of this, you need look no further than here:

The Twitter account of the United States’ House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology quotes a Breitbart article by another old friend of ours, James Delingpole, which quotes David Rose’s article in the Mail on Sunday:

The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare. Thanks [sic] what’s now recognised as an unusually strong El Nino, global temperatures were driven to sufficiently high levels to revive the alarmist narrative – after an unhelpful pause period of nearly 20 years – that the world had got hotter than ever before.

In case you’re also wondering about the objective facts of the matter David Rose quotes with approval “the authoritative Met Office ‘Hadcrut4’ surface record” in his latest article in the Mail on Sunday this very morning:

New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.

The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.

The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.

There were claims – now exploded by the Met Office data shown here – that our report was ‘misleading’ and ‘cherry-picked’.

Yet bizarrely, the fiercest criticism was reserved for claims we never made – that there isn’t a long-term warming trend, mainly caused by human emissions.

This just wasn’t in our report – which presumably, critics hadn’t even read.

We’ve explained all this to David before, yet bizzarely we obviously need to do so again. Here’s the Mail’s version of the latest HADCRUT 4 data from the Met Office:

hadcrut-mail-20161211

and here’s ours:

hadcrut-wft-20161211

Can you spot any “cumulative effects of man-made global warming”?

Messrs Smith, Rose, Delingpole, Whitehouse et al. may well be unaware of the fact that the satellite temperature data they’re so fond of cherry picking doesn’t include data from the lower troposphere between 80 degrees North and the North Pole. Just in case they fancy spinning the latest objective facts from the Arctic in the near future, here’s the long term autumnal temperature trend:

80n-son-20161211

and here’s the long term November Arctic sea ice extent trend:

monthly_ice_11_nh

Watts Up With The Inconvenient Arctic Hiatus?

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Our title for today does of course refer to the inconvenient hiatus caused by the Gremlins currently stealing my comments from under the noses of Anthony Watts’ eagle eyed team of moderators before they can approve them as suitable for public view. Yesterday Mr. Watts published an article under the headline:

“Inconvenient: Record Arctic Sea Ice Growth In September”

Not a lot of people know that Anthony quotes our old friends at the Global Warming Policy Forum quoting our mutual friend Paul Homewood as follows:

Since hitting its earliest minimum extent since 1997, Arctic sea ice has been expanding at a phenomenal rate. Already it is greater than at the same date in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015. Put another way, it is the fourth highest extent in the last ten years. Even more remarkably, ice growth since the start of the month is actually the greatest on record, since daily figures started to be kept in 1987.

and GWPF Science Editor, David Whitehouse, as follows:

As I wrote when looking at last year’s data the declining Arctic ice cover has been one of the most powerful images of climate change and that many who follow the debate don’t look too hard at the data. This results in superficial reporting that does not convey any of the complexities of the situation and as such is poor science communication.

With the data for 2016 now in it is time to look again at the claims of an “ice pause.”

In the spirit of improving science communication I commented as follows on Mr. Watts article, when seven previous comments were visible:

Annual average sea ice was all the rage last year:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/11/on-the-pause-in-global-sea-ice-anomalies/

You may well be wondering what a graph of annual average Arctic sea ice extent looks like? Take a look:

taminoannualanomaly-aug-2016

Discuss.

This morning (UTC) there are 197 comments visible under the WUWT article, but mine is not amongst them. Those Gremlins have a lot to answer for!

You may possibly think my comment was somewhat on the terse side? In part that’s because I’d just had a “debate” of sorts with one or more WUWT moderators who happily admitted to [snip]ping large parts of my side of the “conversation”. I certainly didn’t want to offend them by “taking pot shots” or engaging in “self promotion”. After all they had concluded their remarks by informing me that:

It is settled then …you are mendacious

The SIMPLEST solution is to stop attempting to post comments here. We are not required to carry them.

Needless to say my most recent witty riposte was grabbed by the Gremlins:

wuwt-2016-09-26_1647

Just in case you were wondering what a mendacious moderator might mean:

[men-dey-shuh s]

adjective

1. telling lies, especially habitually; dishonest; lying; untruthful:
a mendacious person.

2. false or untrue:
a mendacious report.

Shock News! The Worms Have Turned!!

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Today we bring a positive plethora of “Shock News!”. Starting with sea ice, yesterday Anthony Watts published an article on WUWT about the 2016 Arctic minimum extent. That’s not too surprising perhaps, but what’s shocking is that included one of Wipneus’ graphs of Arctic sea ice AREA that has been gracing our very own Arctic Sea Ice Graphs page since Anthony mocked us for not having such a thing. His take on this momentous event?

All of the data I’ve looked at agrees, Arctic sea ice is now on the upswing, and in a big way.

This graph from Wipneus shows the abruptness of the change.

Here it is, in all its glory:

amsr2-area-all-20160913

What’s not in the least surprising is that Anthony failed to provide a link to the source of the graph, and that our polite request for that to be corrected remains invisible took a long time to be approved over at Watts Up With That. Here it is, in all its ignominy:

selection_918

As if that isn’t enough to cope with for one day, there was even bigger shock yesterday. Tony Heller stated:

“Effective Skeptics Don’t Reject Basic Physics“

which is accompanied by a screenshot from an Independent article which reads as follows:

One of Britain’s leading climate change sceptics – former Chancellor Nigel Lawson – has admitted that humans are causing global warming.

Speaking to the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee, Lord Lawson said he did not “question for a moment” that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas.

And he accepted there was “huge agreement” among scientists that it was having “some effect” on the atmosphere.

But the former Conservative Cabinet minister argued it would be “crazy” for the UK to try to stop burning the fossil fuels that produce carbon dioxide, claiming countries like China were simply carrying on doing so.

Lord Lawson founded the Global Warming Policy Foundation in 2009 to oppose attempts to reduce the rise in temperatures and has emerged as one of Britain’s leading sceptics.

Here’s a recording of Nigel Lawson versus Adair Turner yesterday, testifying before the Economic Affairs Committee:

It seems as if the “97% consensus” on “anthropogenic global warming” is now at least 97.1%. I cannot help but wonder when Anthony Watts will reveal the news to his faithful followers? Meanwhile most of Tony’s many merry minions are unhappy bunnies this morning. 2015 “New Einstein” award winner Gail Combs complains:

The biggest problem is with that statement he just betrayed every skeptic and agreed that we are all tinfoil hat Den1ers.

It does not matter what else he added. That ‘sound bite’ is a HUGE WIN for the other side. Add the Ship of Fools ‘win’ and they will bash us into the ground.

I am sorry Tony, but it is a complete PR disaster especially right before the US elections.

As you well know this has never been about science. Our side plays by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, their side are dirty street fighters using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and lie and cheat and browbeat at every turn. So their side wins EVERY D@MN TIME!

Mr. Heller comments:

I completely agree with [Nigel Lawson]. Do you consider me to be a “real skeptic” ?

Answers on a virtual postcard please, in the space provided below.

Global Sea Ice “Comeback” Conspiracy

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Our Twitter feed has suddenly been inundated with messages to the effect that:

Global sea ice makes a strong comeback as El Nino fades.

First up was Professor Judith Curry on April 12th, with:

You will note that we were not the only ones to swiftly conclude that Judy’s assertion was lacking both veracity and verisimilitude! Then this morning came our old friends at the Global Warming Policy Forum with:

You will note that the GWPF adorned their “Tweet” with a graph purporting to show “Global sea ice anomalies”. We can only assume that Benny Peiser hadn’t read this April 11th article of ours, which pointed out that:

NSIDC has suspended daily sea ice extent updates until further notice, due to issues with the satellite data used to produce these images. The problem was initially seen in data for April 5 and all data since then are unreliable, so we have chosen to remove all of April from NSIDC’s archive.

To remedy that (no doubt?) inadvertent oversight on Benny’s part here is a graph we prepared earlier of absolute global sea ice area using reliable data from the AMSR2 instrument on the Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency’s SHIZUKU satellite:

2016-04-12-UH-AMSR2-Area

The GWPF were followed this afternoon by Anthony Watts with:

Both Prof. Curry and non Prof. Watts adorned their “Tweets” with a graph allegedly comparing “global temperature” with “tropical temperature”, but provided no graph of “polar temperature”. To remedy that (no doubt?) inadvertent oversight here is one we prepared earlier:

NCEP-Arctic-T2-DJF

All members of this team of synchronised “Tweeters” provided links to an April 11th article by a certain Paul Dorian entitled, believe it or not:

“Global Sea Ice Makes A Strong Comeback”

Note in particular the part of Paul’s article that states:

In an interesting twist, the recent analysis found that the global ice area remained stable throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, while temperatures climbed suggesting “the global sea ice area is not particularly a function of the global average surface temperature.” [Source: Willis Eschenbach/”Watts Up With That” web site]

We can only assume that Paul Dorian hadn’t read this April 10th article of ours, which pointed out amongst other things that:

One feels compelled to ask why Willis’s global average temperature graph neglects to mention 2015 when he implies that it does?

Here’s an up to date version of one of those that Bill The Frog prepared for us earlier:

HadCRUT-201602

We must further assume that Paul hadn’t read this April 11th article by Mr. Watts either. It stated that:

A few years ago in 2009, I was the first to notice and write about a failure of the instrumentation for one of the satellites used by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) to show Arctic Sea Ice extent. Today, we have what appears to be a similar problem with satellite sea ice measurement.

It seems that Paul Dorian has finally read at least one out of all these informative articles, because the latest revision of his own piece of imaginative fiction now starts:

The source of global sea ice information cited in this posting was NOAA’s National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). They are now reporting issues with the satellite data used to produce these images and this information was not known at the time of the writing of this article.

Do you suppose we can now expect a similarly “fulsome apology” from the other players in this tragi-comic farce, together with all their rebloggers, retweeters, plagiarisers and other assorted acolytes?