Bishop Hill Glaciologists condemn Guardian "misinformation"
Sep 17, 2011 Climate: other The Guardian has been reporting details of a new atlas, which reports 15% ice loss in Greenland, ascribing the changes (bien sur) to global warming.
The world's biggest physical changes in the past few years are mostly seen nearest the poles where climate change has been most extreme. Greenland appears considerably browner round the edges, having lost around 15%, or 300,000 sq km, of its permanent ice cover. Antarctica is smaller following the break-up of the Larsen B and Wilkins ice shelves.
I'm therefore grateful to Tamsin Edwards for pointing me to this thread on the Cryolist email list.
Dear Cryolisters, especially media people 'listening' in: No doubt this 'news' story and Atlas are going to be repeated far any wide. THIS IS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. THIS IS NOT WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING. Greenland specialists, people like Michele Cittero, Peter Ahlstrom, Leigh Stearns, Gordon Hamilton, Waleed Abdalati and many more have documented what actuallyIS happening in Greenland, and it involves some incredibly rapid changes, mainly increasing melting, thinning, andretreat; and slight thickening in some sectors, but overall Greenland is a story of massive, rapid retreat. Special dynamics are at play, and probably climate warming as well. However, this Guardian story is ridiculouslyoff base, way exaggerated relative to the reality of rapid change in Greenland. I don't know how exactly the Times Atlas produced their results, but they are NOT scientific results. Therefore, media be warned: play on this story at your own serious risk of losing credibility. I am certain that the scientists mentioned above, and many others,will respond with actual data, throughly peer-reviewed publications, and lots of data to show what is happening.It isa dramatic story, many dramatic stories. But don't believe this Guardian article.Sorry, Guardian. I used to just grin and bear it when things like this happen. But the IPCC fiasco and the whole'sad chain leading up to it, where media played on media and NGO's played on each other, without actual sciencein the loop, leads me to believe that there is no such thing as being too critical with the media. This Greenland story is not science; did I say that already? OK, now somebody can figure out where the new brown or the lossof old white came from. Not from proper treatment of data, that's for sure. Thanks to Jim Torson and Graham Cogley for bringing this new 'news' to my attention. It is a crisis of misinformationonly if the media or politicians fail to consult with scientists.
Reader Comments (132)
Good to see some scientists challenging the wildly exaggerated and alarmist media coverage. But two comments:
... and many more have documented what actuallyIS happening in Greenland, and it involves some incredibly rapid changes, mainly increasing melting, thinning, andretreat; and slight thickening in some sectors, but overall Greenland is a story of massive, rapid retreat. - I would disagree with the last statement; it is is certainly an exaggeration.
.. Therefore, media be warned: play on this story at your own serious risk of losing credibility.
What credibility? The media haven't had any credibility on AGW (and just about every other issue I have looked into) for at least 10 years now.
You congratulate a scientist for saying what you think you want to hear then slap him down when you realise it isn't? Denial in action.
Guardian "misinformation" - never! Obviously these glaciologists are big coal and big oil funded.
With climate experts like George Monbiot how could the Guardian get anything wrong.
Why am I surprised this is in the Guardian? The BBC hasn't picked up on it yet. It must be weekend factor.
Can you please proved an up-to-date Climate Scientist ID card or your scientific credentials do not count.
Sorry just saying what all good journos, politicos and warmists would say.
What is happening in the Arctic region is a 50-70 year cycle. In the 15th Century, Captain Zhou circumnavigated Greenland in his massive junk, so it's a long established process.
It''s driven by bio-feedback, hence the phytoplankton blooms seen 20-100 km from the ice in today's Arctic.
These blooms cause wider dispersion of aerosols and warming of the Arctic. When the old ice has gone, the Arctic freezes again. This has started. the same mechanism causes the accelerated heating at the end of ice ages, but it's in the Antarctic.
This recent Arctic heating had nothing to to with CO2. It's the same mechanism that accounts for fast heating at the end of ice ages 2000 years before CO2 concentration in the air even twitches.
Basically, climate science has got it completely and utterly wrong. Hansen and Trenberth are fighting for their careers and reputations by persisting in claiming they are right. But in doing so they are intent on killing millions by their unprofessional behaviour.
Trenberth, not physics' trained, made a monumental cock-up when he confused Prevost exchange energy for a real heat source. It's an elementary mistake no professional physicist or engineer would have made.
Hansen's mistake was been to believe showman Carl Sagan's optical physics, the basis of the claim that imaginary high feedback CO2-AGW is hidden by imaginary 'cloud albedo effect' cooling. In reality, it's heating, the real GW mechanism, and it's easily proven.
The politicians who have protected these clever charlatans [Hansen is now claiming the AIE is twice as large] will, unchecked, kill millions in the UK alone by the windmills and carbon trading which are in reality aimed at making the Mafia and the landowners rich.
Should not Damian Carrington resign and then apologise to the Polar bears.
"In the 15th Century, Captain Zhou circumnavigated Greenland in his massive junk,"
Loon alert! I've never seen such a massive amount of junk.
Loon alert! I've never seen such a massive amount of junk.
Sep 17, 2011 at 10:26 AM | Lazarus
Surely you've read about the hockey stick?
http://history.cultural-china.com/en/34H206H11342.html
'The lands near the shipyards at Nanjing were planted with forests of trees to supply the builders of huge junks, some 400-600 feet long and 190 feet wide,'
Some of the wrecks have been found.
'The other group sailed north along the west coast of Greenland over the top and south to land on Iceland. From there they sailed the Arctic Ocean, through the Bering Straits then south past Japan and then home to China.'
Tamsin's link includes this comment
'Jeff/others,
It is very clear that much of the new brown (and pink) results from a simple change in mapping colour to the local ice masses surrounding the Greenland Ice Sheet (mountain glaciers and ice caps peripheral to the ice sheet itself). It is hard to read the poor resolution maps in the Guardian article, and the legends are chopped off, but one of the major issues appears from the change in colour from white to pink/brown for these local ice masses peripheral to the ice sheet between the 1999 and 2011 Times Atlas map.
Although many of these regions have decreased in area and thickness over the past decade(s), reported in many recent scientific papers, the misinterpretation of enormous losses of glacierized area from these maps is far off the range in measured losses. For example, measured areal loss for tidewater terminating local ice masses in central East Greenland is in the order of only 1-2% (Jiskoot et al., submitted). If you misinterpret the change from white to pink/brown from the Times Atlas for this region, then you would misinterpret that it would have lost all (100%) of its ice, which is clearly not the case.
There is no end to correcting frequent misinterpretations of (scientific) data by the media and the general public, and our role as scientists is primarily to use our expertise to do scientific research, so that progress in understanding the earth can proceed. The major lack in most stories, including this one, is the proper reference to source data and/or peer-reviewed scientific literature. Any informed citizen has to realise that scientific experts should be consulted for the most up-to-date, comprehensive and reliable information.
Best regards, Hester'
Even Sylvestre Huet from Liberation thinks it's rubbish.
"A quick back of an envelope calculation by a glaciologist from Toulouse shows that, if it were true, sea levels would have risen by 1.5 metres in the last ten years. "
http://tinyurl.com/67nbxeu
"Surely you've read about the hockey stick?"
Which one? Every temp reconstruction seems to look like a hockey stick.
Alistair do you know what circumnavigated means?
John Vidal - if you read here, I'd like to understand the relevance of your reference to Antarctica.
Please can you tell us how much smaller in % terms Antarctica is with the loss of the Larsen and Wilkins shelves you mention? Please can you tell us their failure mechanism and please can you give us a 100 year history (including any seasonal variations) on their changing areas? Thanks.
I'm not happy. I wrote the climate change section for this Atlas and didn't say any of that Greenland rubbish!
I have contacted the editors.
" media be warned: play on this story at your own serious risk of losing credibility"
now that is silly as the Media have no credibility left to lose!
"You congratulate a scientist for saying what you think you want to hear then slap him down when you realise it isn't? Denial in action."
And not recognising that heaters do the same is also "Denial in action" so no high horses please !
Lazarus: Zhou sailed up the W coast of America and went North of Greenland ending up in Iceland. That's nearly all the way round. After that he went home via the NW passage and Japan but the route is uncertain. He reportedly knew Greenland was an island.
"And not recognising that heaters do the same is also "Denial in action" so no high horses please !"
Any examples of a 'heater!' congratulating a scientist then disagreeing with what they have just said?
"the route is uncertain"
Yet you feel qualified to assert things as fact.
When were glaciers stable? When was Greenland unchanging? While I'm happy to note the openness of this piece's author, Jeffrey Kargel, to the possibility that the media is overplaying the effects of "climate change" on Greenland, I'm less happy to note Kargel's openness to a more restrained form of alarmism. Greenland has only been looked at by scientists, in person and from space, for a very short time. If scientists could travel backwards through time, there is no moment that they could choose when the glaciers on Greenland would be static. A vast system of mostly frozen water being overrun by weather systems in a dynamic atmosphere is going to show impressive dynamics of its own, period. Stop scaring people. Even and especially if you think you're subtle about it.
At the suggestion of Leo Hickman, I have also contacted the Readers' Editor at the Guardian about this.
Alistair do you know what circumnavigated means? - Lazarus
I am lead to beleive that those who were not circumcised, but circumnavigated instead, understand very well indeed.
Lazarus: How did Zhou know Greenland was an island? I suppose he could have talked to the Vikings who farmed it. The fact is all this rubbish about the natural 50-70 year Arctic melt cycle is just that, rubbish. Here's another very detailed view of the issue.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/16/arctic-ice-refreezing-after-falling-short-of-2007/
My approach has been to show that IPCC 'science' is based on three incorrect hypotheses. Given time, any competent professional scientist or engineer can show back radiation and CO2-GW supposed to cause the end of ice ages is bunkum. The third, Sagan's incorrect optical physics, is more subtle. Basically, the AIE narrows droplet size distribution in clouds. This is the real global warming mechanism with CO2-GW probably slightly negative [IR self-absorption].
Proper scientists are isolating those who behaved unprofessionally or incompetently. Honest climate scientist insiders now realise they have been teaching incorrect physics. Cloud physics and the basic CO2 physics is in for a very big shake-up.
As for the calibration against the 33K claimed 'present greenhouse heating', the propaganda taught to our children, it's easily shown that the argument which claims it is false. Real present GHG heating is about 10K.
A level read on Greenlands Times Atlas
http://lindseynicholson.org/2011/09/greenland-times-atlas/
There is a bit of a paywall on this one. With the new Times Atlas at £150 I do not think I will be able to look at it properly soon.
The big change is in the colour coding. The new "brown" category whatever it means did not exist at all before 1999.
What seems strange is that there are big swathes of brown and green in the NE of Greenland lying immediately onshore from sea areas still covered permanently with thick ice. It also seems strange that while Cryosphere Today and NSIDC show big changes in Arctic sea ice generally since 1999, sea ice in the vicinity of N E Greenland hasn't changed a lot.
Perhaps the clue comes in the Times blurb which rells us the new atlas gives new detailed information on" climate change" and "environmental threats". Could it be that this billing has encouraged the compilers to try to egg it up a bit?
Isn't it sad that the fact that when we are told the satellite imagery is from NASA this only serves to reduce its credibility?
Leo Hickman
Did anyone catch his Twitter exchange with RB, BH and BW? "Ah I can't read all the papers that are out there. I can't read that book - my reading list is too long".
"Talk to the Readers' Editor"?
Please. The Readers' Editor is for 'readers'. If Betts writes to the Readers editor, that is already no more a situation where a mere reader concern is being taken up for inside consideration.
This is a matter where experts question the very basis of a published article.
"15% of Greenland ice melted since 1999". - and this did not elicit even the slightest of scepticism from John Vidal - the Guardian Environment Editor-in-Chief? Is it because scepticism in environmental and climate claims has been completely outsourced?
This is a situation where the Press Complaints Commission should be called in, and the article should be withdrawn and an apology tendered.
Mischief in map-making has lead to war, and loss of lives.
Look at the record of the New York Times in 2008, as it blathered about a newly discovered island in Greenland, uncovered due to global warming:
alistair "In the 15th Century, Captain Zhou circumnavigated Greenland in his massive junk, so it's a long established process."
The Chinese got to Africa and New Zealand, but tales of their circumnavigating Greenland belong to the realms of fiction and the fertile imagination of Gavin Menzies. I've been to exhibitions in China about the treasure fleets and Menzies is simply an embarrassment - like Erich von Daniken, making all sorts of assertions about interactions and artifacts, and a whole concatenation of assumptions, none of them proven.
There is evidence that Greenland was circumnavigable in the fifteenth century, but the claim that Admiral Zhou sailed around the north of Greenland has no satisfactory historical foundation.
alistair
You don't know for sure that the did KNOW it was an Island. It is all speculation. There is no evidence that anyone has ever circumnavigated Greenland. There is no evidence that it was physically possible in human history let alone in the 1400s.
You also link to unqualified blogs as evidence. All that is evidence of is that people are gullible enough to believe pseudo-science and political rhetoric.
"they have been teaching incorrect physics"
Again you have NO evidence of this. I know you hope, even believe it true, and it may turn out to be in the future (who knows, the world might be flat after all) but in all probability it is not.
"There is evidence that Greenland was circumnavigable in the fifteenth century"
Any links to determine how credible this evidence is?
alistair
The rapid warming at the termination of the last glacial appears to have been triggered by slight eccentricity in the Earth's orbit (Milankovitch Cycle).
This season's summer ice melt tied with 2007 as the most extensive loss during the satellite era.
Richard Betts
Good. Thank you. The last thing anyone needs is more misrepresentation of the science in any climate-related field. And the bloody Graun needs reminding, on a regular basis. Not that it exactly sins alone.
Just like the 15% melt of the Greenland ice is the most extensive loss during the cartographic era.
Thanks for the clarification/red herring though.
The Zhou and other voyages are historical record. Is the problem you have with this that it confirms the MWP existed? If so, hard luck because the CO2-GW hypothesis is currently being dismembered by professionals sick and tired of scientific fakery and/or incompetence.
How on Earth Trenberth has been able to get away with 'back radiation' for decades is beyond comprehension. And as far as NASA is concerned, its scientific credibility was totally destroyed when in 2004 it claimed fake 'surface reflection' physics made rain clouds dark underneath.
In reality, it's the opposite of the truth but to admit there is a second optical process would have been to admit there is no evidence of the 1st AIE for thicker clouds.
The World is now cooling fast. CO2-AGW cannot be more than about a ninth of that claimed by the IPCC.
"the satellite era."
Half a lifetime?
Hi BBD: The whole basis of the amplified CO2-GW hypothesis is the amplification of TSI change due to Milankovitch. But it's an inconvenient truth that the warming started 2000 years before any rise in CO2, and at the edge of the Antarctic ice pack: Stott L., Timmermann A. and Thunell R., Science 19 October 2007: Vol. 318 no. 5849 pp. 435-438 DOI: 10.1126/science.1143791
The mechanism is the same as that which gives the periodic Arctic melting: it's the release of aerosol precursors from melting ice [ Jones G. and Gabric A., Australian Antarctic Magazine page 29 issue 10 Autumn 2006 ] and the iron giving phytoplankton blooms [ Perrette M., Yool A., Quartly G. D., Popova E. E., Near-ubiquity of ice-edge blooms in the Arctic. Biogeosciences, 2011; 8 (2): 515 DOI: 10.5194/bg-8-515-2011 ]. The phytoplankton changes climate over large distances and the clouds go from white to grey as albedo plummets.
During the last ice age, the earth tried to climb out of the ice age a number of time s before there was success and it's always the same mechanism: R. Rothlisberger R., Bigler M., Wolff E. W., Joos F., Monnin E.and Hutter M. A., GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 31, L16207, doi:10.1029/2004GL020338, 2004
So, Milankovitch alone isn't enough: the biofeedback replaces CO2-GW. As far as your quote of 2007 and 2011 ice loss being equal, that's another false statistic from a biased source: http://notrickszone.com/2011/09/16/2011-record-arctic-ice-melt-not-even-close/
Can I point out the blatantly obvious and something very basic and probably look somewhat silly for stating it!. The Climatic Zone that the arctic is in, is called the Polar (cold) climatic zone, has it changed? No not at the moment, it is still a Polar (cold) climatic zone, When it can be called a Temperate or Hot climatic zone then it has changed, the yearly variability of sea Ice during the Arctic summer time is irrelevant and not an indicator of any long term climatic change, You can't use a fact that something is there (ICE) to prove that the same 'something' is not there (ICE). (Well maybe the Garudianq6 can, but its Not done this way in science, in my view)
Thanks to Drs Kargel and Betts for setting the record straight. Let's hope that the Grauniad prints a correction.
Now if only we could keep the same lid on press releases about new papers, which exaggerate their importance...
The Readers Editor will press for a correction, only if the matter is not under adjudication by the Press Complaints Commission.
The misrepresentation is one of the Guardian's own making - it involves contrasting the maps of the 1999 and the 2011 versions, without giving the accompanying legends, - which is a synthetic creation by the Guardian. I am sure the art department did not on its own decide to stitch up those two maps one next to the other - it must have been instructed to do so, by the author of the piece.
The misrepresentation/false statement is in the caption, which reads:
In reading the article, it is amply evident that John Vidal is *not* making a clear distinction between changes depicted in the map and changes occurring in the real world.
Jethro Lennox, the editor of the Atlas, stands behind his brown Greenland. He pulls a Hasnain:
Update
The stitched comparison image was provided by the atlas publishers:
BBD said ""This season's summer ice melt tied with 2007 as the most extensive loss during the satellite era".
Well, when I look at these plots I think your use of the term 'tied' may be a bit of an exaggeration...
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
alistair
You are getting this muddled:
Nobody is suggesting that CO2 is a dominant or even significant factor in the initial amplification of Milankovitch forcing. Your first point is misleading. The study you reference, Stott et al. (2007), concludes that slight changes in austral Spring insolation reduced SH sea ice extent. Consequent reduction of ice-albedo feedback (the dominant feedback in glacial climate states) amplfied the warming.
What you say about the climatic effects of ice melt on phytoplankton blooms is interesting, but you race far ahead of your sources. For example, the Jones and Gabric article in Australian Antarctic Magazine concludes:
Judging from the abstract, Perette et al. (2011) does not support your claim either:
I cannot find the Rothlisberger study you reference. Does this paper discuss the Bond cycles and the N Atlantic conveyor? And/or the effects of obliquity and precession (per Milankovitch)?
Nobody is suggesting Milankovitch alone is sufficient to terminate glacials. The fact that it can simply demonstrates how sensitive the climate system is to minor changes in RF. And we would do well not to lose sight of this fact.
Of course bio-feedbacks play an important role in climate change, but to suggest that they over-print the effects of GHGs (CO2 and methane, specifically) is going much too far.
WRT Arctic sea ice extent, you are correct - it was the second-lowest in the satellite record after 2007. Dismissing U. Bremen's result as a 'false statistic from a biased source' is missing the wood for the trees. Not to mention indicative of a strong counter-bias on your part.
As a side note, would you mind providing proper links for your references? I have had to spend far too long chasing them up myself.
Dave Salt
I'm not going to argue this further.
See here for a thorough (and factually correct) overview. Please note:
BBD, what's there to argue?
Simply look with your eyes and tell me if the word 'tie' is a sensible description of the observed data.
I think you could legitimately say that 2011 tied with 2008 but to to describe the evidence the way you did is just wrong: there's simply nothing to argue about, so why do you insist on dragging in other information?
BBD - what is the purpose of your posts?
Dave Salt
Read the link. Stop pretending it's all okay.
Not banned
I'm trying to encourage you to think. Without much apparent success.
Dave Salt
To be crystal clear about this, this was in my reply to alistair:
So why keep on with the nit-picking? You aren't making a point. You aren't adding any new information. So what are you doing? Rhetorical question, of course. You are distracting attention from the really important aspect of this discussion. You know, the elephant in the room with 'AGW' daubed across its arse in big red letters.
BBD - you get me to think alright! I just can't keep up!
btw - when are you going to help me with the derivation of climate sensitivity from first principle RTEs? Last time I asked you arm waved it away as not worth your time as it if it were so stupidly obvious. Well please can you give it your best shot? - I'm eager to think it through in small simple steps. Thanks
ps - please can you let me in on what Dave Salt is pretending? I looked at his graphs and they were as he described. Again small simple steps, even if it makes me look like a fool, I'm willing to learn. Thanks again.
It has started
The BBD preaching and the moral antics
What do you have to say about the Times map fiasco?
That is the topic of discussion. You say - "we don't need more misrepresentation".
What do you have to say for this?
The Times Atlas Editor Jethro Lennox on YouTube
At ~1 m 40 s into the video:
"...the Greenland ice cap, we've seen a drastic reduction of that, about 15%..."
You don't have anything to say? Instead you want to remind that, "we would do well not to lose sight of this fact" and keep playing Arctic ice games.
Steven Goddard has just posted a very interesting animation. Times Atlas comparison vs September, 2011 satellite imagery.
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/times-atlas-plain-incompetent