Earlier today the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that:
On September 11, Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles). The 2024 minimum is the seventh lowest in the nearly 46-year satellite record. The last 18 years, from 2007 to 2024, are the lowest 18 sea ice extents in the satellite record…
Note that this is a preliminary announcement. Changing winds or late-season melt could still reduce the Arctic ice extent, as happened in 2005 and 2010. NSIDC scientists will release a full analysis of the Arctic melt season, and discuss the Antarctic winter sea ice growth, in early October.
Consequently several of the usual cryodenialospheric suspects have been frantically spinning their webs of deceit around the announcement.
First up was Javier Vinós, who beat the NSIDC’s starting gun by firing a broadside on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, Javier frequently pontificates about Arctic sea ice, amongst other things, on Judith Curry’s “Climate Etc.” blog. He confidently announced that:
Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum with an extent greater than in 2007, 2012, 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2023.
The two warmest years in a row at > +1.5°C have ZERO IMPACT on the 17-year resilience of Arctic sea ice.
Needless to say, “Snow White” felt compelled to quibble:
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:
Having yet to cross metaphorical swords with many of the more foul mouthed “skeptics” of my acquaintance this missive comes to you later than usual this year. However I have just come across one Alan Poirier for the first time.
1) Apparently Alan’s source of Arctic expertise is Watts Up With That!
This is how the entirety of our conversation on Twitter went earlier this evening (UTC):
Al Gore said nothing of the sort Alan. Evidently your memory is faulty.
2) The pseudonymous Vegieman’s apparent source of Arctic expertise is Tony Heller!
This is how he signed off from our recent conversation over at Tony’s unReal Climate Science blog:
The arrogant, condescending manner you project is consistent with those that defend the absurdities of every godless, human denigrating, population destroying effort currently being perpetrated on mankind everywhere. What possesses you and your kind to glory in heaping hopelessness, misery, and despair on your neighbor? To come here and strut your depraved condition is evidence of your insecurity. Tony and most here share an integrity and regard for truth that you are severely deficient in. It would be good if you could abandon your sinking ship, but I know it is a very hard descent from the crows nest in which you reside.
Not a lot of people know that our headline for today (apart from the terminating question mark) has been shamelessly plagiarised from Paul Homewood’s latest Arctic article. This will give you a flavour of Paul’s purple prose:
Electroverse have uncovered some blatant data tampering by DMI:
“It would appear that the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) may have taken a leaf out of NASA’s ‘data-fudging 101‘.
Sometime between late-Nov and early-Dec this year, the DMI’s Arctic Sea Ice Volume chart experienced a mysterious ‘vanishing’ of ice — this is revealed by a direct comparison of the Nov 18th and the Dec 8th charts below.”
I am able to corroborate their findings. In September I took this screenshot of DMI sea ice thickness. Note that the black line for this year was close to the 2018 line, and above 2017 for Sep 20th:
But the new version shows this year well below those two years:
There is no other way to describe this than blatant fraud. The changes do not appear to have been even documented, and the old data is not archived, being simply “replaced”. These should surely be very basic scientific requirements.
Neither does there appear to have been any public announcement by DMI about the fact or the justifications for what amounts to a significant change.
What this episode means is that DMI can no longer be trusted to produce honest, reliable data. It also raises the question of whether similar tampering has been carried out in previous years, without anybody being aware. After all, it is only by pure accident that it has been spotted this time.
Even fewer people know that my helpful explanatory comment is currently invisible to Paul’s band of merry (mostly) men:
Should anyone contrive to click on the invisible link this what they would see just below the DMI’s recent Tweet:
Quite predictably Tony Heller has also jumped on the self same bandwagon, claiming in an article entitled “Rapidly Disappearing Arctic Ice” that:
On December 4, DMI showed Arctic sea ice volume above the 2004-2013 average:
Quite predictably, the data disappeared for three days, and now that it has returned, DMI has massively reduced the amount of sea ice in the Arctic. Much of the thick ice off the coast of Siberia has disappeared:
In normal circumstances I would of course point out the error of his ways to Tony via Twitter. However:
Here is the DMI’s explanation for the recent change in their Arctic sea ice thickness/volume visualisations, as shown on their “Polar Portal” web site:
New graphics December 7, 2021
We have improved the DMI operational ocean and sea-ice model HYCOM-CICE with higher horizontal resolution and updated HYCOM and CICE code. In particular, the sea ice code has been greatly improved with meltponds, sea-ice salinity, improved thermodynamics and much more. The freshwater discharge from Greenland has also been greatly improved using freshwater product from GEUS, which especially improves the coastal ocean currents and thus the ice transport nearshore Greenland. The model has been running continuously since September 1990. Therefore, we have by December 07, 2021 updated the graphics of sea-ice thickness and volume using the new and improved data on Polarportal and ocean.dmi.dk.
The improved model setup has led to higher variability as well as less abrupt melting during the melt season, which gives a shift of approximately half a month for the time of minimum ice volume. The trend between the years is almost unchanged. Thereby, a year with a large sea-ice volume in the old setup also has a large volume in the new setup, and similar for years with low sea-ice volume.
I always thought that “skeptical” folk didn’t much care for the output of “climate models” but I guess I must have been mistaken?
[Edit – December 13th]
Needless to say my comment at NALOPKT is still invisible this evening. However credit where credit is due. Tony Heller has at least not censored my comments on his blog. Earlier today Watts Up With That referred to both the Heller and Homewood DMIGate2 articles. Do you suppose the following helpful comment of mine will ever see the light of day at WUWT?
Watch this space for more #DMIGate2 news as and when we receive it!
An article by Andy West on the topic of “Public ClimateBall” has now been posted on both Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. and WUWT. Here’s a brief extract from the introduction:
Climate blogger ‘Willard’ has put significant efforts into a large taxonomy of skeptical challenges (the ‘Bingo Matrix’ or ‘Contrarian Matrix’) and brief rejoinders to same. Along with the very useful characterization of especially the rhetoric aspects of the conflicted skeptic / mainstream climate-change blogosphere, as an engagement not based primarily upon rational argument leading where it will, but one with different rules, a kind of ritual or game: ClimateBall™. Everything herein is my own view of ClimateBall, and what it points to.
Which got me thinking about my own experience of playing “the great game”. Checking Twitter for my assorted “plays” over the years, most of them seem to be missing! Hence my Agatha Christie inspired title for today.
They’re not actually “missing” of course, if you know the URLs in advance. However for some strange reason many of them do seem to be missing from Twitter search results. Since Christmas is already less than a month away let’s have a little festive fun shall we? How many “tweets” of mine tagged with the #ClimateBall hashtag can you find that were posted between January 1st 2021 and November 28th 2021? To give you the vaguest of red herring style clues, here’s the most recent one at the time of writing:
Answers on a virtual postcard please, in the space provided for that purpose below. Please also include a brief description of your search methodology.
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.
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:
Our regular reader(s) must have noticed by now that in the dim and distant past we had the occasional debate with Anthony Watts, proprietor of the self proclaimed “world’s most viewed climate website”, catchily entitled “Watts Up With That”?
You may even have noticed that more recently we managed to engage in an admittedly brief debate with the suddenly world famous American Physicist Steven Koonin?
Now in a world exclusive we bring you the shock news that we are suddenly unable to debate with either of them!!!
In a recent article on the Watts Up With That web site Anthony wrote:
I was sent this by email, apparently “Scientific American” doesn’t believe in fairness. I stopped subscribing to SciAm years ago because they’ve turned into a socialist cesspool of opinion, with science as an afterthought. Steve Koonin writes:
“I attach a response that I submitted yesterday to Scientific American. Not surprisingly, they declined to publish it.
Please do distribute my response freely among your contacts or websites.
Steve Koonin“
Needless to say Anthony did as he was asked. Since I consider myself by now as something of an expert on the deficiencies of Professor Koonin’s alleged “science” I replied to Steve’s response to Scientific American on WUWT as follows:
Needless to say two days later I have received no reply and my pertinent comment is still languishing underfoot on the Watts Up With That cutting room floor. Paraphrasing Dave Yaussy only slightly, and bolding for emphasis:
The greatest danger posed by Steve and Tony isn’t their ideas, it’s the attempt to silence all dissent.
That, and their corruption of science.
By way of one further example of his hypocrisy, Anthony did of course advertise his article on Twitter:
Of course he also stifled any anticipated dissent:
Q.E.D? As some scientists have been known to write from time to time.
It’s not very often that we discuss an article from Watts Up With That with even the vaguest hint of approval in the smoke filled editorial offices at the Great White Con, but here’s the exception that proves the rule! No doubt the fact that allegedly I inspired the article in question is also relevant? Here’s the start of a guest post at WUWT entitled “Polariced Mysteries“, written by our old friend Willis Eschenbach:
I got into a discussion about polar sea ice in the comments to my post Where Is The Climate Emergency?. In the process I noticed some mysteries.
To start with, here’s the Arctic sea ice area record.
The mystery for me in this record is the decade from about 1998 to 2008. There’s very little month-to-month variation in the record over that period, and the ice area is dropping steadily … followed by ~ thirteen years of very large month-to-month variations with little overall change in ice area. Is this real? Is it an artifact? Unknown.
Then we have the Antarctic ice area record …
Here, the obvious mystery is, just what the heck happened around 2015-2017 to cause the Antarctic ice area to drop so precipitously?
And finally, putting both poles together, we get the following:
etc. etc…
At the North Pole, there is an ocean covered with sea ice. At the South Pole, there’s a high rocky plateau covered with land ice and surrounded by sea ice. Yet despite these totally different situations, the area of sea ice is almost exactly the same at both poles … say what?
I will say that I am overjoyed that the world of climate contains far more mysteries than answers …
“When nothing is for sure, we remain alert, perennially on our toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.” —Carlos Castaneda, in The Teachings of Don Juan
My best to all adventurers in this most marvelous universe,
Thanks for your good wishes Willis, but there is a big black fly in the marvellous universal ointment. No sooner had a potentially enlightening discussion begun than darkness descended from on high:
At the risk of repeating myself:
What do you suppose the effect of ice-albedo feedback will prove to be over the next 10 years or so? Or if you prefer over the last 10 years or so?
And why “remove the seasonality”. As you correctly pointed out over there, “When the ice is mostly there the sun mostly isn’t”.
In our recent article about the forthcoming G7 Summit in Cornwall we suggested that:
Climate change is top of the G7 agenda along with Covid-19, and you can rest assured that vested interests will not miss any opportunity to promote those interests over the next two months and beyond.
That has indeed proved to be the case! Let us count the ways.
Steven Koonin’s new book “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” is being promoted (left?), right and centre by a veritable cornucopia of the usual suspects. In an endeavour to explain (to the mythical (wo)man in the street?) the ways in which “A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on” I’ve performed a Google search for the phrase “climate science has drifted so far out of touch with the actual science as to be absurdly demonstrably false” by way of a demonstration:
65 “demonstrably false” clones of the WSJ article, and counting……
[Edit – April 24th]
This morning’s update on my “demonstration” Google search.
There are now 241 “demonstrably false” Kooninism clones, and counting……
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