Regular WUWT readers know of the issues related to Arctic Sea Ice that we have routinely followed here. The Arctic sea ice trend is regularly used as tool to hammer public opinion, often recklessly and without any merit to the claims. The most egregious of these claims was the April of 2008 pronouncement by National Snow and Ice Data Center scientist Dr. Mark Serreze of an ice free north pole in 2008. It got very wide press. It also never came true.
To my knowledge, no retractions were printed by news outlets that carried his sensationally erroneous claim.
A few months later in August, when it was clear his first prediction would not come true, and apparently having learned nothing from his first incident (except maybe that the mainstream press is amazingly gullible when it comes to science) Serreze made another outlandish statement of “Arctic ice is in its death spiral” and” The Arctic could be free of summer ice by 2030″. In my opinion, Serreze uttered perhaps the most irresponsible news statements about climate second only to Jim Hansen’s “death trains” fiasco. I hope somebody at NSIDC will have the good sense to reel in their loose cannon for the coming year.
Not to be outdone, in December Al Gore also got on the ice free bandwagon with his own zinger saying on video that the “entire north polar ice cap will be gone within 5 years“. There’s a countdown watch on that one.
So it was with a bit of surprise that we witnessed the wailing and gnashing of teeth from a number of bloggers and news outlets when in his February 15th column, George Will, citing a Daily Tech column by Mike Asher, repeated a comparison of 1979 sea ice levels to present day. He wrote:
As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was evidence of man-made global warming. Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began. According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
The outrage was immediate and widespread. Media Matters: George Will spreads falsehoods Discover Magazine: George Will: Liberated From the Burden of Fact-Checking Climate Progress: Is George Will the most ignorant national columnist? One Blue Marble Blog: Double Dumb Ass Award: George Will George Monbiot in the Guardian: George Will’s climate howlers and Huffington Post: Will-fully wrong
They rushed to stamp out the threat with an “anything goes” publishing mentality. There was lots of piling on by secondary bloggers and pundits.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I got interested in what was going on with odd downward jumps in the NSIDC Arctic sea ice graph, posting on Monday February 16th NSIDC makes a big sea ice extent jump – but why? Then when I was told in comments by NSIDC’s Walt Meier that the issue was “not worth blogging about” I countered with Errors in publicly presented data – Worth blogging about?
It soon became clear what had happened. There was a sensor failure, a big one, and both NSIDC and Cryosphere today missed it. The failure caused Arctic sea ice to be underestimated by 500,000 square kilometers by the time Will’s column was published. Ooops, that’s a Murphy Moment.
So it is with some pleasure that today I offer you George Will’s excellent rebuttal to the unapologetic trashing of his column . The question now is, will those same people take on Dr. Mark Serreze and Al Gore for their irresponsible proclamations this past year? Probably not. Will Serreze shoot his mouth off again this year when being asked by the press what the summer ice season will bring? Probably, but one can always hope he and others have learned something, anything, from this debacle.
Let us hope that cooler heads prevail.
By George F. Will, Washington Post
Friday, February 27, 2009; A17
Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.
Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was — as it is today in a contrary crusade — a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.” Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today’s war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.
On Wednesday, the Times carried a “news analysis” — a story in the paper’s news section, but one that was not just reporting news — accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.
Reporter Andrew Revkin’s story was headlined: “In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall.” Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing — sometimes a distinction without a difference — concerning today’s climate controversies.
Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts — how does he know this? — that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just “a pause in warming.” His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive — it concerned controversies already many days running — that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that “experts said” this columnist’s intervention in the climate debate was “riddled with” inaccuracies. Revkin’s supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.
As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.
Citing data from the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September “the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began.” According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were “near or slightly lower than” those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.
So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying “we do not know where George Will is getting his information.” The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center’s Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.
The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:
On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times (“All the news that’s fit to print”), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The difference is that the NSIDC scientist made a prediction and was wrong, George Will stated past data and was wrong.
The reason why he was wrong is he didn’t bother to look at the graphs and put his thinking cap on, he acted like a journalist and quoted another journalist.
The journalist he quoted, and I use that term very loosely, really just a man with a mission and a keyboard, once again put is slant on things after cherrypicking and posted drivel. Michael Asher’s blog postings are a joke compared to something like this site. I’ll never forget the time he sensationally claimed the UN had claimed they had been alarmist and it turned out the peson he quoted didn’t even work for the UN. He spends all day googling facts but fails to do any deeper research.
So, George Will’s article should be derided and somebody should tell him to stop using Michael Ashers biased ramblings as a guide.
As an aside, ironically 1979 was quite a lot different to 2008 with it having a positive anomaly of 1% whereas we have 1% negative anomaly or so now.
I can hear George saying “But it’s only 2 %” 🙂
Regards
Andy
Pragmatic said
“AGW lost their fight when they refused to allow the opposing point of view to be heard. Even the dimmest of wits has scratched and pondered why don’t they let the other guy speak or publish? And therein you lost the battle. Only the weak do not tolerate criticism. And the very weak censor thought. Do like TonyB suggests – get outta mom’s basement and live a little. It’s a lovely planet and it’ll survive without you. Enjoy!”
Can I point out that it was smokey who made the last comment-not me. The rest of your coment is well made-gaining research money to investigate the ‘opposite’ point of view is highly problematic and thereby gaining peer reviewed studies becomes ever more difficult which is then of course held against us..
TonyB
OK, listen up cause I’m only doing this once.
For those of you who are old enough to remember the ice age alarmism of the seventies…
Look into my eyes, you are feeling sleepy, now repeat after me:
1) There was NO global cooling alarmism in the seventies
2) Dr Stephen Schneider etc did NOT predict an imminent Ice Age
3) There was No global cooling consensus, scientists in the seventies were predicting warming, not cooling.
Got it? Good, no more of this global cooling nonsense and go now and buy carbon offsets from Al Gore so that we can stop global warming.
Ice age
Funny, I’m feeling a little sleepy. What global cooling consensus? Who is DR Schneider and how do I buy Mr Gores carbon wonderful offset products that you are referring to?
Tonyb
There was ice-age alarmism in the 1970s (e.g. I can recall a tv prog on blitzkrieg glaciation – the idea was that the glaciers wouldn’t creep slowly down from the north, but rather the winter snows would not melt in Europe leading to an immediate agricultural crisis and in due course an accumulation of much ice above our heads), but it did not have the political savvy which the IPCC plotters brought to the far more successful AGW-alarmism. I regard the Intergovernmental Panel of Crooks and Clowns as selfish, evil people, who are continuing to cause a great deal of harm to society. Ever so slowly, the reality of their modest grasp of science is becoming more widely known, along with their impressive grasp of politics.
The global sea ice AREA is actually greater as well.
Dec, 79 SH sea ice area – 6.03 M km^2
Dec, 79 NH sea ice area – 10.55 M km^2
Total Dec, 79 area – 16.58 M km^2
Dec, 08 SH sea ice area – 7.13 M km^2
Dec, 08 NH sea ice area – 10.62 M km^2
Total Dec, 08 area – 17.75 M km^2
An increase of 1.17M km^2 or a significant 7.1%
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/N_12_area.txt
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/pub/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Dec/S_12_area.txt
(The problem is that nobody knows where the actual data is. These are only year-end monthly data and they are in two separate files. Someone could through the GO2135 sub-directory and scrape out all the monthly data back to 1978 but that looks like alot of work to me. This should all be in a simple to use database/file).
Here is a quote from Reid Bryson in a preface to “The Cooling” in 1976:
“The Cooling will be controversial, because among scientists, most of the matters it deals with are hotly debated. There is no agreement on whether the earth is cooling. There is not unanimous agreement on whether is has cooled, or one hemisphere has cooled and the other warmed. One would think that there might be consensus about what data there is – but there is not. There is no agreement on the causes of climatic change, or even why it should not change amongst those who so maintain. There is certainly no agreement about what the climate will do in the next century, though there is a majority opinion that it will change, more or less, one way or the other. Of that majority, a majority believe that the longer trend will be downward. ”
I think we can all trust this summary. The only cooling consensus then, as now, refers to the near certainty that there will be another ice-age. Will is therefore wrong if he suggested there was short-term cooling consensus, but since Will was mainly commenting not on the science but of the reporting of the science he is right to say the journalists then were alarmist and mixed up short term and long term cooling as if they were the same thing. This is why we all remember the ice-age scare and why the BBC made an alarmist documentary about it. But Will’s main take-home message is merely that we’ve seen this rhetoric before and just like then it’s based on data that isn’t as alarming as you are being led to believe.
Pragmatic:
Earth to Pragmatic: Regardless of what Bill may or may not have demonstrated, the Shackleton et al. issue has absolutely nothing to do with sea ice extent. What it has to do with is George Will quoting a peer-reviewed paper completely out-of-context to try to desperately come up with some evidence for his completely bogus notion that there was some sort of consensus in regards to imminent global cooling in the 1970s.
Bah…The losers in a scientific debate often try to claim that they are being somehow discriminated against, censored, not allowed to publish, etc. You can hear the same stuff here from the intelligent design crowd here: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/ Peer-review exists for a reason, which is to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and try to insure that most of the papers that do get published properly acknowledge the past literature, make intelligible arguments that follow from the data, and so forth. And, given some of the papers that have been published on the “skeptic” side (like Douglass et al) that actually suffered from elementary errors that ought to have been caught in the review process, I would say that if anything we seem to have some reviewers bending-over-backwards to allow dissenting papers in even when these papers are severely flawed.
As TonyB noted, you have misattributed this statement. It is only Smokey…and now you…who are this rude (and clueless about me).
IceAge says:
Or, to put it another way:
Look into my eyes, you are feeling sleepy, now repeat after me:
1) There was a scientific consensus regarding global cooling in the seventies.
2) Almost all of the papers supporting this consensus have miraculously evaporated.
3) The 1975 NAS report saying that the future course of climate cannot yet be predicted is a figment of my imagination.
4) Wallace Broecker never wrote an extremely prescient paper in Science in 1975( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;189/4201/460 )that essentially predicted dead-on the future course of the climate over the next 30 years even before any warming had yet been observed.
5) Surveys of the peer-reviewed literature mean nothing when we can find a few (cherry-picked) articles from the mainstream media to back up our assertions.
Now Lorne Gunter chips in.
Lorne Gunter: Climate change double-think
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/03/02/lorne-gunter-climate-change-double-think.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
Shawn Whelan says:
Wow…I’m impressed! That’s a lot of [snip] and deceptions that Gunter has managed to cram into one short piece!
Smokey (12:11:15) :
Gerald Machnee (10:16:25),
You’re right, some folks will nitpick and split hairs for hours on end trying to prove that George Will was wrong — an impossible task in this case, as shown by Bill Illis in his 17:55:09 post. Bill shows that the current ice extent is a million square kilometers greater now than it was in 1979.
A remarkable achievement considering that the global ice area didn’t drop below 16.5Mm^2 in 1979 and the current ice area is 15.14Mm^2!
Phil.:
Not surprisingly, Phil… click
December 1979 ice extent, S.H.
December 1979 ice extent, N.H.
December 2008 ice extent, S.H.
December 2008 ice extent, N.H.
Current ice extent is 24.7 million square kilometers, not 15.14 mil.
Cartoon by Jack Ziegler in The New Yorker of 3/2/09:
2 guys at a bar, one says “The older I get, the faster time seems to pass. That’s just one more side effect of global warming.”
Caption: THREE-MARTINI SCIENCE
Billy Ruff’n (17:34:28) :
Billy Ruff’n is a 47 ft. steel-hulled, well-found, full-equipped sailing vessel. It is as capable of completing the Northwest Passage as any sail boat currently afloat. If Dr. Serreze and Al Gore are serious about demonstrating to the world that the Arctic is melting, I offer them the opportunity to put their bodies where their mouths are.
Here’s the deal: Sign as crew for a transit of the NW Passage. I’ll fund the trip. If it’s as warm in the Arctic as they say it is, we’ll all have some fun, they can shoot some video and show the world what a cake walk it was. If we can’t make it through and get stuck in the ice, they agree to spend the winter on the boat.
Not that novel though since ~6 yachts did it in 2008, smaller than yours and unreinforced too.
Smokey (10:19:56) :
Phil.:
“…the current ice area is 15.14Mm^2!”
Not surprisingly, Phil… click
Current ice extent is 24.7 million square kilometers, not 15.14 mil.
Nonsense, to quote you: “wrong, wrong, wrong…….”
The current ice area (i.e. today’s) is 15.14 Mm^2, the current ice extent is not 24.7 Mm^2, the NH ice extent is ~14 Mm^2 and the SH ice extent is ~2Mm^2 so global ice extent is ~16 Mm^2.
Hi joel
Firstly, it may not be popular to say so but I really enjoy the intelligent postings you, Mary Hinge and a number of other warmists make here. It is good to be kept on our toes.
I particularly enjoyed your last post 19 19 36 ( I do actually read them!) especially a link to a very good article by Charles Keeling writing about 1800 year old oceanic tides being more responsible for natural warming than co2. I will revert to it again in a moment, but Mr Keeling made a reference to the drought of ancient Akkad.
As a historian who –like Charles Keeling- believe that climatically we have been this way before (numerous times) and nothing is ‘unprecedented’ I thought readers might enjoy the curse of Akkad.
The civilisation of Akkad-2000bc. Lines taken from the curse of Akkad
For the first time since cities were built and founded,
The great agricultural tracts produced no grain,
The inundated tracts produced no fish,
The irrigated orchards produced neither syrup nor wine,
The gathered clouds did not rain, the masgurum did not grow.
At that time, one shekel’s worth of oil was only one-half quart,
One shekel’s worth of grain was only one-half quart. . . .
These sold at such prices in the markets of all the cities!
He who slept on the roof, died on the roof,
He who slept in the house, had no burial,
People were flailing at themselves from hunger.
This legend was just a small part of a very long thread of mine over on CA demonstrating that climatically we have been this way before. This theme was also taken up by another well known author as follows;
“from ancient civilisations through Bronze age cultures, Greeks Roman, all flourished in times of benign climate and perished when climate turned against them.
Yet the historical climate records of the western hemisphere suggests that around AD 950 temperatures increased and the climate changed at precisely the same time as the Mayan collapse far to the north. Leif Eriksson sailed through the Labrador sea between the new settlement of his father Eric the red in Greenland and North America, becoming the first European to set foot on what we called Vinland. This began the global climate shift known as the mediaeval warm epoch …it clearly seems to have been a shift in the global climate pattern recorded in North America by the first Europeans there. Up until around 900 the north Atlantic sea routes from Scandinavia and Iceland to the new communities in Greenland had been completely frozen over and impassable and at the end of the warm epoch, around 1300, temperature began to fall and sea ice again blocked the routes. After the warming epoch temperatures fell again at the beginning of the 14th century.”
Who makes these learned comments? None other than Al Gore in his rather good book ‘Earth in the Balance’ dating from 1992. His numerous climactic references demonstrate the earth has been warmer than present at various times, for example during the MWP. It’s a shame Dr Mann didn’t read it or talk to Al before concocting his hockey stick.
This is the link you gave to Charles Keelings rather good theory about a 1800 year tidal cycle forcing being responsible for the natural warming we experience-barely one word about co2. Having read his autobiography I don’t think his heart was really in that theory was it-nor was Nick Revelles.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/8/3814.full.pdf+html
I will finish with a poem by Shelley that seems to sum up that civilsations come and go –posted for no other reason than that it is very evocative of the subject matter posted above.
I would be interested in your thoughts about Keelings study, and about past warming episodes, which amply illustrate our own era represents nothing new in earths long history of climatic change-and all achieved without man made added co2.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
—”Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley
Tonyb
Phil.,
Who are we gonna believe? You? Or the NSIDC?
According to the NSIDC’s maps posted @10:19:56 above:
Global ice extent, 12/79 = 23.9 MM SK
Global ice extent, 12/08 = 24.7 MM SK
Go argue with the NSIDC.
The non-event in D.C. is more interesting to me, so I’m checking out whether there are 200 protesters, or 150. Birddog me on that thread if you must.
Smokey (10:19:56) 2/03/2009:
Current ice extent is 24.7 million square kilometers, not 15.14 mil.
Smokey (12:30:54) :
Phil.,
Who are we gonna believe? You? Or the NSIDC?
Someone who can read a calendar?
According to the NSIDC’s maps posted @10:19:56 above:
Global ice extent, 12/79 = 23.9 MM SK
Global ice extent, 12/08 = 24.7 MM SK
Go argue with the NSIDC.
No need, I’m sure they’re smart enough not to claim that the ice extent reported for 12/2008 is the “current ice extent” on 2/03/2009 as you did!
Has anyone mentioned the PDO to the leading US media titles. PDO cooling phase – ended around 1975. PDO warming phase – ended around 2005 – 2007.
What a surprise: a major 25 – 35 year cycle in our climate system and an oscillation of temperature occurs as a result.
Why is it so surprising that, as humans, we are born and gain in strength, competence and capability until around 35, then slowly retreat in many aspects from 36 to 70, but that the climate system has no analagous oscillation?
It isn’t, to me.
Why should it be to the media, to the scientists and to the politicians?
Unless of course, they have ulterior motives? [selling newspapers; winning grants/publishing ‘research’; creating conditions for money making from ‘green issues’ might be a few places to start….]
DAV (08:56:16) :
Perhaps Serreze’ “raising the spectre” was unintended but his post at RC (”North Pole notes” via johnlouis (18:53:45) ) and Gavin’s response are quite telling (emphasis mine):”
Interesting how one’s perspective can be changed depending on one’s goals. Here, for example is Serreze in an apparent different life:
“In particular, we do not observe the large surface warming trends predicted by models; indeed, we detect significant surface cooling trends over the western Arctic Ocean during winter and autumn. This discrepancy suggests that present climate models do not adequately incorporate the physical processes that affect the polar regions.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v361/n6410/abs/361335a0.html
Pragmatic: What that might in fact show is that Serreze’s views have evolved since that 1993 paper on the basis of the evidence. I.e., perhaps the evidence since 1993 has shown significantly more warming…and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more modern understanding of potential problems with the radiosonde records and now having access to a the satellite record has changed our understanding of even some of the pre-1993 data.
I remember the mini ice age hype in the 70s, I also read the list of so called scientists who signed up to the con, it seems the ones left have joined up to the carbon scam now, funny that there were no reports of eruptions under the pole when the atomic subs played chase then, how about sun activity? it was low in the 70s, just like when the Vikings were frozen out of Greenland and north America. All I have seen is poor science, making the data fit the prize. How was the drought in the USA wheat lands? worse than the 20s and 30s? it was pretty damn bad then.If global warming is honest why did the miracle man from Chicago agree with Stephen Harper that clean coal plants are the future then announce he would bankrupt anyone running one? carbon credits are one mighty con and the mafia boss heading the scam as A Gore so all who follow him are tainted by the scam, pereod.
Joel…..the energy expended from your efforts on here are (inadvertently) contributing to AGW.
Relax….and take a break. So much wasted energy. Direct your energies toward real environmental problems….like the strip-mining of the ocean’s fish supply. (As opposed to pointless causes such as anthropogenic global warming).
Meanwhile….we are going to be re-grouping and figuring out what to do in a new dalton or maunder.
The Russians have been preparing for such….but incredibly….the “West” has not.
Even though the UKMET office has had to shovel snow more than once from its offices this winter and has shivered through a record cold winter and the latest Hansen-inspired AGW protest in DC was met with 8 inches of snow and temperature maxima in the mid 20s….in MARCH even….
Prove…..without a shadow of a doubt….that the “warming” is occurring.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
George Monbiot is a resident of the United Kingdom, therefor he must comply with the Criminal Code of that Country. People should note that if he is writing FRAUDULENT REPORTS, then that is a Criminal Offence in UK Law.
videlicet:
United Kingdom Statute Legislation.
FRAUD ACT 2006 – (Chapter 35)
An Act to make provision for,
and in connection with,
criminal liability for fraud
and obtaining services dishonestly.
[8th November 2006]
…………………………………………………
Section 2 – Fraud by false representation
(1) A person is in breach of this section if he-
(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation-
(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2) A representation is false if-
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
(3) “Representation” means any representation as to fact or law,
including a representation as to the state of mind of-
(a) the person making the representation, or
(b) any other person.
(4) A representation may be express or implied.
(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded
as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any
system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).
Section 5 – “Gain” and “loss”
(1) The references to gain and loss in sections 2 to 4
are to be read in accordance with this section.
(2) “Gain” and “loss”-
(a) extend only to gain or loss in money or other property;
(b) include any such gain or loss whether temporary or permanent;
and “property” means any property whether real or personal
(including things in action and other intangible property).
(3) “Gain” includes a gain by keeping what one has, as well
as a gain by getting what one does not have.
(4) “Loss” includes a loss by not getting what one might get,
as well as a loss by parting with what one has.
Others involved either directly or indirectly may be charged with
aiding and abetting or conspiracy of the abovementioned offences.
Note that in Section 2 part 2(b) that the test is not a very difficult one.
…… Legal Eagle UK