They say a picture is worth a thousand words right? Depending on what you are trying to present, that picture can make or break any presentation.
So it was with great interest that I noticed this picture in the article from the UK Telegraph with this alarming title:
Climate change is ‘faster and more extreme’ than feared
Arctic sea-ice in September 1979 and 2007, showing the biggest reduction since satellite surveillance began. Photo: Fugro NPA Ltd
Hmmm…right below it there was a link to the World Wildlife Fund, and in the body of the article, was the source of this “news” story.
WWF’s report, Climate Change: Faster, stronger, sooner, has updated all the scientific data and concluded that global warming is accelerating far beyond the IPCC’s forecasts.
I didn’t realize that the WWF was a scientific organization, and that they could update the data and conclude our current situation worse that findings of the IPCC. How stupid of me to not pay attention to this.
CNN also picked up this WWF press release. See CNN’s story here.
Maybe WWF should “update” their findings with this picture from 2008:
Click for a larger image direct from the source
Yes a picture is worth a thousand words, isn’t it? For those of you that visit these other blogs, be sure they see this updated picture and send my regards. While you are at it, ask them at the Telegraph to provide the source data and methodology for the creation of the two images used in the report. They look more like artist renderings than data based 3D models. The images were not part of the WWF report.
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Source of data needed: What satellite was able to take a photo like this in 1979? If the photo wasn’t faked, I would be admiring the skill of the modern satellite operators in positioning the camera to duplicate the old photo. I also agree that the ice patterns are impossibly identical north of Canada…unless that wrinkled stuff is all land. But taking it at face value, the photo shows the Bering Strait at the bottom, thus the North Pole should be … wow, look at all that water near the North Pole in 1979 and 2007!
I’m sure the source image is not a single photo but a montage, like one of those “Earth from Space” posters. They photograph different areas at different times when they happen to be cloud-free and stitch the shots together. For the Arctic as a whole to have no clouds at all is effectively impossible.
The elevation of the viewpoint appears to be at several thousand kilometres, too high for normal photo-surveillance satellites but too low for geostationary, (which only hover above the equator anyway).
Any real photo of the whole Arctic in September would have to have part of the Earth in shadow (night), as the terminator would be less than 10 degrees from the Pole.
WWF Report author Tina Tin:
Tina conducted her Ph.D. research on the thickness of Antarctic sea ice at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (US) and holds a Masters of Engineering from the University of Cambridge (UK). She participated in two research cruises in the Ross Sea and presented papers at a number of international scientific conferences. Her passion lies in the protection of wilderness areas – in the polar regions and worldwide. When she is not focused on Antarctica, she works with WWF and other environmental organizations to promote climate change science and policy in Europe and elsewhere.
Even if I were to “believe” the graphic depiction of waning sea ice … I would be left with the OBVIOUS question:
What SCIENTIFIC conclusions can we draw from Arctic Satellite photos spanning such a short period of time from 1979 – 2008 ?
It is utter nonsense to identify any long term … let alone catastrophic … trend from this very small set of data.
Can anyone find this report?-WWF US and UK have nothing later than April 2008 -called “Arctic Climate Impact Science — an update since ACIA” at:
http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/WWFBinaryitem8706.pdf
If this is the one than the Telegraph is reporting on-AAAAGH!!!
I’ll just go and find a wall to hit my head against!
Has anyone found a link to the report?
Well well well. I’ve done a nice little gif animation of this year’s ice increase, only a month’s worth, right at the top of my primer (link to it through my name) and if you click on the pic you can see it fullsize 31 days’ worth.
WATCH BABY ICE GROW!
Interesting complementary information:
“Less Ice In Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 Years Ago”
From a “believer”:
“…”Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.”
You have to believe to get research funding…
This should once and for all ‘kill’ the sad stories about bears drowning because there is not enough ice up there
Great blog, I am reading it nearly every day!
Out of interest I compared the prediction of 40 million tonnes loss of wheat, maize and barley with the news release from the actual paper which stated
[quote] Using global yield figures for 1961-2002 from the Food and Agriculture Organization, Lobell and Field compared yields with average temperatures and precipitation over the major growing regions.
They found that, on average, global crop yields respond negatively to warmer temperatures for several of the crops. Lobell and Field then used these relationships to estimate the effect of observed warming trends.
“To do this, we assumed that farmers have not yet adapted to climate change, for example by selecting new crop varieties to deal with climate change,” Lobell said. “If they have been adapting – something that is very difficult to measure – then the effects of warming may have been lower.”
Most experts believe that adaptation would lag several years behind climate trends, because of the difficultly of distinguishing climate trends from natural variability.
The importance of this study, the authors said, was that it demonstrates a clear and simple relationship at the global scale, with yields dropping by approximately 3-5 percent for a one-degree Fahrenheit increase. “A key moving forward is how well cropping systems can adapt to a warmer world,” Lobell said. “Investments in this area could potentially save billions of dollars and millions of lives.”[/quote] Not quite the same impact has it
As you all know but seem to “forget”, the anomaly in extent is strong in the summer but much less in autumn and winter – and this is known and has been predicted for a while. compare september 79 and 08 and you’l see the dfference.
@barbee butts
A pity you couldn’t come up with more substantial proof of your claim.
The link you provided shows a timeline that contains more records of cold winters and hot summers than evidence of a ‘global cooling scare’. There really is not a shred of evidence of a conspiracy against humanity in there.
The scares mentioned are (amongst others) from newspaper articles covering the sinking of the Titanic. I hope you don’t feel current day climate science is responsible for what these journalists wrote a century ago?
When I google for ‘global cooling scare’ I end up on a Wiki page, showing very little. As far as I know, there is only 1 science publication mentioning the possibility of a cooler climate: S. Ichtiaque Rasool and Stephen H. Schneider, published in the journal Science in July 1971. But that was based on the assumption of a quadrupling of aerosols, which have a cooling effect.
Then there seems to have been an article in the march 1, 1975 edition of Science News, which seem to have predicted a ‘a full-blown 10,000-year ice age’. Worth noticing is that ‘Science News’ is not peer-reviewed and not to be confused with the magazine ‘Science’.
Really, there is not much substance to the claim, although any additional evidence of this global cooling scare is very welcome.
barbee, I can not tell you what was in your school books and how your science teacher presented it. But if the consequence of that was being stuck in Miami, perhaps you should thank your teacher.
I emailed a letter to the Telegraph about this yesterday but they probably won’t print it. They printed three of my letters last year, and one was about climate change.
A poster mentioned Christopher Booker. Booker deserves huge credit for exposing this catastrophic delusion, but I would point out that he writes in the Sunday Telegraph, which actually handles climate change pretty well. It’s printed articles by Gore, Christopher Monckton and Bob Carter. In contrast, its sister publication is totally pro-AGW and never indicates that there are other opinions.
About a year ago I entered into correspondence with the Telegraph deputy editor. I was considering lodging a complaint with the UK Press Complaints Commission about an article about a Pacific island that was about to be drowned by rising sea levels. The caption on the photo said that the island could disappear in decades. The photo itself showed the island’s coastline: cliffs and steeply rising terrain. A quick check on Google Earth showed that the island’s average height was well over 50 meters. Obviously the good folks at the Telegraph are so blinded by AGW hysteria that they cannot see something so obvious.
The editor’s main defence was that they they were merely quoting the island’s leader (quite possibly they were trying to extract cash from Australia). I accepted that. However, the article still contained several statements that were not quotes. And clearly the caption was not just wrong, but nonsensical. Although I would probably have lost, I really wish I had lodged the complaint.
Unfortunately the same defence would apply here, for example to the list of claims. They are probably all false, but they are presented as claims by WWF, so the Telegraph is probably in the clear on that one. However, in the middle it says: “40 million The amount of grain in tons lost each year due to rising atmospheric temperatures”. This is presented as a fact, and not a WWF claim (although it is also a WWF claim). Is this true? Some time ago I looked up data from the World Agricultural Organisation, which showed that global food production per head had been steadily rising.
I think I may email the deputy editor to ask for information on the two images. If it could be shown that they had been doctored then that would probably be a good basis for a complaint to the PCC (not to be confused with the IPCC!).
Finally, here’s the letter I emailed to the Telegraph yesterday. They almost certainly won’t print it, although they did print three last year. Maybe they didn’t print any of my letters this year because I’m on their black list!
Chris
Letter to Daily Telegraph:
Sir,
Once again the Telegraph unquestioningly prints the nonsense
that emanates from the climate change fanatics (20th October, page
14). As the WWF report was timed to coincide with the meeting of
EU environment ministers it’s hardly surprising that it’s wildly
exaggerated. And since when has the WWF been a scientific
authority able to contradict the IPCC? The carbon dioxide delusion
has given rise to the bizarre and almost medieval practice of carbon
offsets. So here are a few truth offsets:
The warming is not speeding up as the headline claims. Global
temperatures in recent years have been falling, with dramatic falls
this year.
Sea levels have been falling for the last two years.
Although still low, the Arctic ice in 2008 was about 7% greater than
2007 and currently it is rising at a dramatic rate.
The Pugh kayaking expedition to the North Pole failed hundreds of
miles short. The reason? Too much ice. And too much cold.
The Arctic ice melt is caused by a temporary shift in water currents
and probably has little to do with global warming.
The highest Arctic temperatures occurred in the 1940’s and there
was a similar ice melt that peaked in 1922.
The Antarctic has been growing colder for some years and the ice
extent is close to record levels.
Data from the World Agricultural Organisation shows that the
amount of food grown per head of population has been steadily
rising.
We’re going to have to face up to reality sooner or later: the warming
in the 20th century was primarily natural and now the earth is showing
distinct signs of cooling.
The bottom right ‘ice cover’ appears similar to the effect obtained using the ‘smudge’ tool in my old Adobe PhotoDeluxe BE 1.0!! The edges are rounded and not natural.
I submitted a comment last night asking if the WWF paper had been published and peer reviewed as they seem to be implying it is a scientific study. They have moved the article today to the Earth Section and removed all traces of the comments.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,” Astrid Lyså believes.
I like that comment…we don’t know what happened 6k -7k years ago, but we know it’s humans today.
wait, wait, wait. Here, in Czech republic, there is a scientific magazine and in the newest issue, there is a picture from 12th June 2008 and it’s absolutely same as this one from 2007.
Original article still seems to be there under World News http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/3226747/Climate-change-is-faster-and-more-extreme-than-feared.html
Haha, UK Telegraph=FAIL! Sad thing is, most of the populace will take that printed image as fact…
Ric,
If you go to the following site and scroll down to NGOs theres a link to the WWF report
http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/global-warming-faster-expected-wwf/article-176481?Ref=RSS
Well, the problem is that it IS a fact…
And what do you think about what’s happening rightnow to the arctic ice?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Typical of winter ice extension?
REPLY: Look again, there apparently was a graphing error. Your conclusion was premature. Yes what ice is plotted there now is on the increase, and quickly. – Anthony
Watts up with the NSIDC graph today?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
I think Hansen is extending his influence.
Check out the NSIDC ice graph this morning for a good laugh.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Compare vs. AMSR-E
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Obviously, what’s happening here is that the actual ice growth is MASKING the underlying shrinking trend.
(Sarcasm off)
Never mind about the NSIDC graph – they fixed it. Earlier it had jumped back to 2007 levels.