When megawarmist Richard Black of the BBC pans it, you know it’s a problem.
WUWT covered this story earlier, now the crescendo is building on this fancifully exaggerated claim about Greenland melting.
The Times Atlas says:
“for the first time, the new edition of the (atlas) has had to erase 15% of Greenland’s once permanent ice cover – turning an area the size of the United Kingdom and Ireland ‘green’ and ice-free.”
…
“This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever – and doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate.”
The Scott Polar Institute has now weighed in.
The Scott Polar group, which includes director Julian Dowdeswell, says the claim of a 15% loss in just 12 years is wrong.
“Recent satellite images of Greenland make it clear that there are in fact still numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the new Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of new lands,” they say in a letter that has been sent to the Times.
“We do not know why this error has occurred, but it is regrettable that the claimed drastic reduction in the extent of ice in Greenland has created headline news around the world.
“There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature.”
Read the entire article here
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Yet another example proving that Global Warming is Message, not Science
Is there a category for “bullsh-t” \?
In Climate Science the prevailing standard only requires that a computer model exists that shows that the region is ice free. Purhaps Trenberth could whip something up to help out here. It should only take a day or two to get it publish. This way, the Times Atlas could avoid having to re-print all the stuff.
BTW, this Dowdeswell guy should resign. He is waaaaay off-message.
/sarc
“The Times Atlas is not owned by The Times newspaper. It is published by Times Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins said its new map was based on information provided by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).”
One can only surmise that the reason that Black is being sensible is that it indirectly attacks the Murdochs? Forgetting speculation wheres the source for this rubbish of course the NSIDC if they can’t be trusted to get this right can they be trusted to prepare output from data?
For those not familiar NSIDC stand for No Snow Is Due Climatechange and not as stated above.
“There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature.”
================================================
As recent history shows us, this can be easily rectified. Kev, Andy? Either one of you two want to step up again? Oh, sure people will laugh at you, but they’re still laughing about your last forays into the “scientific literature”, so why not take another couple of hits for the team?
A spokesperson for HarperCollins said its new map was based on information provided by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
What does NSIDC know & whenever did they know it? Concerned netizens want to know. LOL.
“The Times Atlas is not owned by The Times newspaper. It is published by Times Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, which is in turn owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
A spokesperson for HarperCollins said its new map was based on information provided by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).”
The same NSIDC who tell us about record low arctic sea ice.
Same data?
More for the “remainder” pile
re: “…climate change is altering the face of the planet forever”. Mind the word “forever” in the claim. That’s comical. Does it mean that when climate stops changing (?!), it will never change ever again?
Didn’t they think someone might actually look at a photograph?
A quick Google search does in fact show an extreme difference between the satellite photographs and maps.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sugexp=gsis,i18n%3Dtrue&cp=7&gs_id=q&xhr=t&q=greenland&safe=off&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1348&bih=541&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi#um=1&hl=en&safe=off&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=greenland+satellite&oq=greenland+sat&aq=0&aqi=g1&aql=&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=30433l45890l2l49474l15l14l1l1l1l0l290l2535l0.6.6l12l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=a3d0e251adf9f3c1&biw=1348&bih=541
yes but further on in the article the Scott Polar Institute get their “please keep the funds rolling in” plea in by stating “….While global warming has played a role in this reduction, it is also as result of the much more accurate data and in-depth research that is now available. Read as a whole, both the press release and the 13th edition of the Atlas make this clear.”
Also, Black gets a sly inference in by saying in his piece “…Many of the institute’s staff are intimately involved in research that documents and analyses the impacts of climate change across the Arctic. As such, they back the contention that rising temperatures are cutting ice cover across the region, including along the fringes of Greenland; but not anything like as fast as the Times Atlas claimed.”
This statement is not from the Polar Institute, it’s out of Black’s poisonous pen but gives weight to the idea that the Institute whole heartedly backs CAGW, where they say nothing of the sort.
However, all told, I did almost fall off my chair when I read the BBC online article, with Black actually reporting on a negative aspect of CAGW reporting. Perhaps as other bloggers have intonated, he knows which side his bread is buttered.
How quickly will a peer reviewed paper be submitted and approved refuting this??
I blame the Danes…..they want to go back and farm Greenland, just like the good old days! (sarc off)
I love the way Richard Black cannot bring himself to actually quote the letter.
RB: But scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute say the figures are wrong; the ice has not shrunk so much.
RB: As such, they back the contention that rising temperatures are cutting ice cover across the region, including along the fringes of Greenland; but not anything like as fast as the Times Atlas claimed.
SPRI: We do not disagree with the statement that climate is changing and that the Greenland Ice Sheet is affected by this. It is, however, crucial to report climate change and its impact accurately and to back bold statements with concrete and correct evidence.
The volume of ice contained in the Greenland Ice Sheet is approximately 2.9 million cubic kilometers and the current rate whereby ice is lost is roughly 200 cubic kilometers per year. This is on the order of 0.1% by volume over 12 years.
So almost a sixth of Greenland has melted in past 30 years? And if all of Greenland melted it would raise sea levels by say 6.5 metres
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/?
I think we would have noticed a 1 metre sea level rise by now?
the scott polar institute are obviously anti-science neocons who get money from big oil.
I notice that in the article Mr Black repeats the lie that the Aral Sea is shrinking due to CC.
Even Wikipedia says it is due to the Soviet Union having diverted the rivers that flow into it!!
http://p38assn.org/glacier-girl-recovery.htm
263 Feet of ICE? Since WWII?
I’m still struggling to find the location on the MAP, but I don’t think it is THAT FAR INLAND (or they never would have been rescued.)
Greenland Ice Loss = Myth…category….
Richard Betts on Sept 17 at the Bishop’s site:
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.
David Schofield says:
September 19, 2011 at 10:42 am
> I think we would have noticed a 1 metre sea level rise by now?
You’re assuming constant ice depth across Greenland. If that were the case there would be some really impressive cliffs at the edge of the ice.
BBC still likes being on thin ice as evinced in the article title. Why would they say “Times Atlas ‘wrong’ on Greenland ice” rather than “Times Atlas wrong on Greenland ice?” Why ‘quotation light’ on the word wrong?
I feel compelled to offer congratulations to one Richard Black; I’d given up hope of ever finding the smallest hint of balance in his Earth Watch articles, but this shows I may be wrong.
The Times response to this:
“Well, yes, but if you wait long enough, you will see we were right”.
/sarc
In the title to Black’s article, why is the word “wrong” in scare quotes? What’s wrong with just saying that Times Atlas was “wrong”? Or, conversely, what does it mean to say it was ” ‘wrong’ “? If it was only wrong in a figurative sense, doesn’t this mean that in some essential way it was right? (I think what it really means is that Black finds it difficult to admit that this was an obvious falsehood, so he gets around this with an interesting verbal pirouette.)
So it would appear that there are lies, damned lies and climate change statistics now!