Guest post by Steven Goddard
In Woody Allen’s classic 1977 movie “Annie Hall,” there is a wonderful scene in a theatre queue where he is having a heated argument with a Columbia University academic about the meaning of Marshall McLuhan’s writing. His opponent is getting quite agitated, so Woody Allen pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a sign to prove his point.
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called “TV, Media and Culture.” So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Woody Allen: Oh, do ya? Well, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me…
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Woddy Allen: come over here for a second… tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Woody Allen: Boy, if life were only like this!
Sometimes life is like that. Pen Hadow has been reported to be telling the press some interesting things this week :
and from the Catlin Web Site :
Fortunately, there is an expert standing behind the sign. The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research has just completed a much more expansive investigation of Arctic Ice, and yes they did actually make it to the North Pole – the old fashioned way – in an airplane. Below is the original German text and the Google translation :
At the North Pole ice sheet is thicker than expectedDas Forschungsflugzeug “Polar 5” beendet am Dienstag in Kanada seine jüngste Arktis-Expedition.The research aircraft Polar 5 “ended on Tuesday in Canada’s recent Arctic expedition.Bei dem Flug haben Forscher die aktuelle Eisstärke am Nordpol gemessen, und zwar in Gebieten, die nie zuvor überflogen worden sind.During the flight, researchers have Eisstärke the current measured at the North Pole, and in areas that have never before been overflown.Das Ergebnis ist überraschend.The result is surprising.Das Meer-Eis in den untersuchten Gebieten ist offenbar dicker, als die Wissenschaftler vermutet hatten.The sea-ice in the surveyed areas is apparently thicker than scientists had suspected.Normalerweise sei neu gebildetes Eis nach zwei Jahren gut zwei Meter dick.Normally, ice is newly formed after two years, over two meters thick.“Hier wurden aber Eisdicken von bis zu vier Metern gemessen”, sagte ein Sprecher des Bremerhavener Alfred-Wegener-Instituts für Polar- und Meeresforschung.“Here were Eisdicken up to four meters,” said a spokesman of Bremerhaven’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.Für die Wissenschaftler steht dieses Ergebnis derzeit noch im Widerspruch zur Erwärmung des Meerwassers.For scientists, this result is still in contradiction to the warming of the seawater.
And from the Wegener Institute web site :
Another focal point of the campaign were large-scale measurements of ice thickness in the inner Arctic, which were conducted in close collaboration of the Alfred Wegener Institute together with the University of Alberta. An ice-thickness sensor, the so-called EM-Bird, was put into operation under a plane for the first time ever. To conduct the measurements, Polar 5 dragged the sensor which was attached to a steel cable of eighty metres length in a height of twenty metres over the ice cover. Multiple flights northwards from various stations showed an ice thickness between 2.5 (two years old ice in the vicinity of the North Pole) and 4 metres (perennial ice in Canadian offshore regions). All in all, the ice was somewhat thicker than during the last years in the same regions, which leads to the conclusion that Arctic ice cover recovers temporarily. The researchers found the thickest ice with a thickness of 15 metres along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island.
So the question is – why does the suspect Catlin data get unlimited press coverage, while the comprehensive data of the Wegener Institute gets buried by the press? Is it possible that some members of the press have an agenda?
Woody Allen made some great movies in the 1970s, while the press was up to it’s usual antics – as reported by The Business and Media Institute.
The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970, amidst hysteria about the dangers of a new ice age. The media had been spreading warnings of a cooling period since the 1950s, but those alarms grew louder in the 1970s.Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.Journalists took the threat of another ice age seriously. Fortune magazine actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics for its own analysis of the danger. “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed,” Fortune announced in February 1974.“It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude,” the article continued.That article also emphasized Bryson’s extreme doomsday predictions. “There is very important climatic change going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest.”Bryson warned, “It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” However, the world population increased by 2.5 billion since that warning.Fortune had been emphasizing the cooling trend for 20 years. In 1954, it picked up on the idea of a frozen earth and ran an article titled “Climate – the Heat May Be Off.”The story debunked the notion that “despite all you may have read, heard, or imagined, it’s been growing cooler – not warmer – since the Thirties.”The claims of global catastrophe were remarkably similar to what the media deliver now about global warming.“The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations,” wrote Lowell Ponte in his 1976 book “The Cooling.”If the proper measures weren’t taken, he cautioned, then the cooling would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.”There were more warnings. The Nov. 15, 1969, “Science News” quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. about global cooling worries. “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilization,” he said.If the cooling continued for 200 to 300 years, the earth could be plunged into an ice age, Mitchell continued.Six years later, the periodical reported “the cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”A city in a snow globe illustrated that March 1, 1975, article, while the cover showed an ice age obliterating an unfortunate city.In 1975, cooling went from “one of the most important problems” to a first-place tie for “death and misery.” “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.”He claimed it was not his disposition to be a “doomsday man.” His analysis came from “the facts [that] have emerged” about past ice ages, according to the July/August International Wildlife Magazine.The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.”
1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
What should have happened is for the catlin route to be traversed to do a check on results.
Catlin say somewhere that the say a plane flying low on a number of occasions – perhaps Alfred Wegener were doing just that?
La-di-da. La-di-da.
The Catlin post on initial survey results can be found here:
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/headline.aspx?postId=187
In the movie, just before the exchange cited above, Woody Allen, after listening to the university professor pontificate endlessly in the movie line, turned to Diane Keaton (or the camera, I can’t remember) and exclaimed:
“boy what I’d give for a giant sock filed with cow manure right now”
Very funny………
last week in aussieland we had Prince Charle’s Sth American trip on the TV news – it was accompanied by a video showing Pen Hadow supposedly at the North Pole telling us the ice was thinner than expected.
unbelievable.
they are going to ram this down our throats regardless.
my prediction: this is going to come to damage the Left, Science and Media in an unimaginably painful way. Only question in my mind is when.
The measurements are based on just 33 days/measurements out of the 73 days they were on the ice.
I thought Pen was busily measuring ice constantly on the journey. Must just be another misunderstanding.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/assets/downloads/CAS%20Snow%20%20Ice%20measurements%20-%20March%20and%20April.xls
The idea of a worldwide deep freeze snowballed.
Naturally, science fiction authors embraced the topic. Writer John Christopher delivered a book on the coming ice age in 1962 called “The World in Winter.”
In Christopher’s novel, England and other “rich countries of the north” broke down under the icy onslaught.
“The machines stopped, the land was dead and the people went south,” he explained.
James Follett took a slightly different tack. His book “Ice” was about “a rogue Antarctic iceberg” that “becomes a major world menace.” Follett in his book conceived “the teeth chattering possibility of how Nature can punish those who foolishly believe they have mastered her.
Hmmmm…. “The Thing” meets “Godzilla” meets “King Kong”….
A group of arctic explorers (researching thinning ice) stumble across an ancient, buried flying saucer (discovered by the tip of their ice drill). They manage to open it and out spills a strange, glowing goo.
The goo rapidly incorporates ice into it’s makeup with the help of millions of nano-machines. It forms a huge animated ice monster that rampages across the ice, heading south, it attacks New York. A small team made up of a brave reporter, a tough NYPD Cop and a brilliant crazy scientist, defy city hall and the federal government to launch a giant magnifying glass into orbit.
As NY is about to succumb to a new freeze from the ice monster, the glass is turned to concentrate the sun’s rays, melting the icy beast.
As the credits roll, some icy green glowing goo slowly drips into the sewers…
Now – If i pretend this is real, can I get an AGW Grant????
neill (16:02:28) :
unbelievable.
they are going to ram this down our throats regardless.
my prediction: this is going to come to damage the Left, Science and Media in an unimaginably painful way. Only question in my mind is when.
The Catholic Churches “Scientific” credibility has never recovered from the Copernicus/Galileo incidents.
bill,
The article contains a link and statement from the Wegener Institute. I’m sure though you read it very carefully in your zeal to be the first poster.
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/ende_pam_arcmip/?cHash=ff957775e4
Alfred Wegener the father of plate tectonics.
His work was reviewed by his peers and rejected as nonsense by the consensus of scientists. How ironic.
Hey haven’t you heard the Ice Age predictions from scientists never happened in the 1970s I have read it on every Pro AGW source on the net and even heard it in debates. Never happened.
Just like this German/Canadian Ice Thickness Study never happened.
You see if you ignore the truth you create your own reality, and in the AGW version of reality the following things never happened.
Little Ice Age
Medieval Warming Period
1970s Ice Age Scare
2008 Arctic Ice Recovery
NY TImes posted a Retraction to Revkins Front Page Slander of Oil Industry used in Congress by Al Gore
Al Gore made himself rich off of Global Warming
There are scientists who take an opposing view
The Sun is in a “quiet” phase
Antarctic Ice coverage is Growing
Greenland has stopped melting
The temperature has at a minimum stop rising.
The rate of Temperature change is not unusual historically
Caitlin Expedition did not make it to the North Pole
Monboit had to take a mea culpa on his latest slanderous attack
Hansen is an Activist Scientist using his position as NASA as leverage
Real Climate actually contributes to Scientific Discourse
See how easy it is to deny reality… you just make up the narrative that fits your preconceptions… the human mind is an amazing thing because it can actually suspend reality by sheer force of preconception, expect to see a cat, look its a cat!
A Perfect example is the conversation regarding the USN Skate and its surfacing at the North Pole. This was apparently planted in the Navy Archives in 1959 as misinformation for this exact moment in time, per the intellectuals over at Monboit’s blog. (sorry last post rehash)
Love and Death was Allen’s best movie in the 70s. No connection that I know of to warming or cooling, just a good movie. It did take place in Russia though, which I understand was cold before the days of Gore.
bill (15:31:33) :
1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
What should have happened is for the catlin route to be traversed to do a check on results.
Catlin say somewhere that the say a plane flying low on a number of occasions – perhaps Alfred Wegener were doing just that?
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science? (As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.
The way I see it is that during the 60’s and early 70’s there wasn’t sufficient MSM coverage of alarmist global cooling to create any mass hysteria. Flash forward and alarmist global warming is splattered all over both the internet and MSM. But what Hadlow and his alarmist colleagues don’t appreciate is that we (the general public) fully understand the internet’s capacity to produce instant “mis”information and usually have sufficient nouse to filter out what is obviously crap. The error of the internet. LOL
I mentioned in previous thread that those people or organisations that are the subject of a blog on this site because of their outrageously bad or inaccurate comments should be invited to come over and read the blog (thats in their honour) and also invited to submit a riposte. The invitation should also mention the current visitor numbers to WUWT just in case there is any doubt they will be widely read….
This was funny when reported during the expedition, it’s funny now, and will still be funny a year from now. Classic comedy never gets old.
Climate Heretic (16:27:25) :
…
See how easy it is to deny reality… you just make up the narrative that fits your preconceptions… the human mind is an amazing thing because it can actually suspend reality by sheer force of preconception, expect to see a cat, look its a cat!
Not just any Cat – a Barking Cat!
I just read a small piece in this weeks San Diego Union Tribune – from the AP. It had a headline: “North Pole explorers forced to end mission”.
The reason listed in the article for their abandonment of the mission, according to the “team”, was “because of an early summer ice melt”.
How can they continue to lie so blatantly???
This AGW thing appeared long time ago, since Arrhenius biased speculations on carbon dioxide role on icehouse periods (1896) or, perhaps, before Arrhenius.
Arctic explorer Pen Hadow has warned that the polar ice cap he has been examining to gauge the extent of climate change appears far thinner than expected after trekking more than 250 miles to the North Pole
Was that far thinner than pre trek per determined
conclusion of far thinner, or really far thinner?
And in ~30 years, global warming (aka climate change) will be so passé. The stories, honed for simplicity and scare headlines, will be about the coming ice age as areas of ice expand in the polar regions and the weather turns cooler. It must have something to do with generational stupidity – it runs in cycles – the weather, not the stupidity; the stupidity we’re stuck with.
When the just begun cooling cycle (which we’ve witnessed) has nearly run its course after ~30 years, the news will be about the danger the cooling presents. The voices protesting that the cooling is masking warming will be dismissed as fringe weirdos.
And then the warming will resume …
The beat changes but the tune remains the same.
You know – one of these days (or centuries), the cooling won’t stop and real estate values from Florida and Georgia to Texas and California will skyrocket …
.
“A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.”
The Catlin experiment IS repeatable. They only have to be dropped off next year in the same place, have their equipment fail at the same time, have the storms arrive at the same time, drill holes in the ice haphazardly in the exact same locations, have the ice drift exactly as it did the year before, depend on the wind blowing in the same direction (for navigation purposes), get lots of tent time in the exact same locations, stick to first year ice, get picked up early and be the toast of London and the good Prince!!!
What could be easier?
Graeme Rodaughan (16:44:59) :
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is
floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science?
(As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.
You’re joking of course
If it’s floating/moving for Catlin its floating/moving for Wegener isn’t it?
Catlin are measuring a stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few cm. Wegener are measuring a different stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few 10s of cm. Both cannot ever measure the same ice again. Which is doing the beter science?
Bill,
Catlin crew can make measurements to 0.001m with a bob line and a tape measure? This is ridiculously accurate, as a matter of fact anybody with a basic scientific background should call this into question. The bottom of the polar ice cover couldn’t possibly flat. So even when they used SPRITE they couldn’t possibly have data that accurate. We should have seen measurements to 0.1 meter at best. + or – 0.1 meter.
These guys must not have been paying attention to the beginning of their science courses. Non of my science courses started without specific instructions on how to measure.
Great research, Steven! I have searched for information on the “planetary chilling” scare that I remember from the 1970’s, but you found much more than I have. Thank you for this.
With the PDO and now the AMO both turning negative, we may see a return of these types of claims. I think it’s going to get really interesting in the next few years.
Bill said… “Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.”
Bill…. Wegener’s team have tested the equipment by drilling holes to compare with electronic readings….. Any Arctic ice will do. It doesn’t have to be Caitlins ice, ya know.
So we have a set of data from a group of scientists in an aeroplane and a set of opposing data from a group of AGW activists playing explorers on the ice…… Hmmm, who you gonna believe Bill?
So Monbot has not corrected his second mistake and the Gordian has not corrected the picture caption? WUWT?
OT: Wife angry with one A. Watts. I was away for a few days at my cabin which has no TV, no internet etc. Come home, yell hello to wife and immediately sign on to WUWT to see what I missed. Get yelled at for not telling wife about trip or if I missed her etc…
bill,
The graph you linked shows that the Wegener estimates are conservative, as they are consistently lower than ground based measurements. Wegener flew in straight lines which transected the pole. Catlin never made it close to the pole.
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
Catlin (by their own admission) chose a route which travels over first year flat ice. They managed to find an average thickness which was slightly lower than Wegener’s minimum thickness.
Do the math. Ice extent has increased since last year. Ice thickness has increased since last year. What does that tell you about volume?
How about the article in the China Daily:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/15/content_11379619.htm
BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhuanet) — British explorers on an Arctic expedition cut short their mission to measure the thickness of floating Arctic sea ice because of early summer ice melt.
“This year, the summer melt came a little early,” Hadow said during a Webcast conference from Resolute Bay in northern Canada. “We would have rather reached the Pole if we could have, but we’ve always regarded (getting there) as the cherry on the cake.”
Barry (17:20:39) :
Catlin crew can make measurements to 0.001m with a bob line and a tape measure?
I think it is a case of poor spread sheet formatting (the spead sheet as presented has hundreds of calculation errors where data is missing – it is obviously preliminary stuff)
J.Hansford (17:24:25) :
Bill…. Wegener’s team have tested the equipment by drilling holes to compare with electronic readings….. Any Arctic ice will do.
Did you see my post above with the grapic from their poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
Measurements seem to be out by 1 metre in 3 in a 600metre run.
Here is the Guardian’s “Climate change scepticism” page:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change-scepticism
I was particularly amused by “Monbiot’s royal flush”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/mar/09/climate-change-deniers-monbiot-cards?picture=344343776
which is one of today’s “Editors’ picks”.
I was surprised that Anthony didn’t make the cut, but I suspect that after the last couple days there will be plenty more cards to go around…
Greg @ 16:54– “I just read a small piece in this weeks San Diego Union Tribune – from the AP.”
That was surprising, but here it is:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/14/world/main5014621.shtml
“Ice Melt Ends Explorers’ North Pole Trek
British Team Planned 3-Month Journey To Study Arctic Sea, Global Warming”
“(AP) British explorers in northern Canada to measure the thickness of floating Arctic sea ice ended their expedition short of reaching the North Pole due to an early summer ice melt, the team said Thursday.”
Things must have changed very quickly.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“May 4, 2009
A slow start to the spring melt season”
Who to believe? Hmmmm….
At the end of Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells a joke that says a lot about self-delusion. A man goes to a psychiatrist and tells him about his brother who thought he was a chicken. The psychiatrist listens for a while and then asks the man why he didn’t get the brother some psychiatric help for his problem. To that the man replies, “We needed the eggs.”
in many ways the habit those totally committed to AGW of refusing to be objective and even acknowledge contradictory evidence is a matter of “needing the eggs.”
Ahhhhhh . . . .:0)
My Catlin fix.
Thank you.
(Fascinating overview of the ice age hysteria)
I went to a state park over the weekend and I was wondering how everyone could pull boats and campers in their new toy electric cars.
Al Gore Lied in his Sci-Fi Horror Comedy known as An inconvenient Truth.
Anyone wishing to learn the truth about global warming should view the Monckton section of my website:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/LordMonckton.html
Reading Joanne Nova’s Skeptic’s Handbook would also be a good idea. It may be downloaded from the books/links section of my site. The handbook is a free download.
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/LinksBooks.html
Nova’s handbook should be given to the parents of every child having trouble sleeping thanks to Al Gore’s nonsense!!!
Actually we are in a very long term cooling trend that has lasted about 7,000 years. For about the past 7,000 years overall temperatures have been cooling though there are periods of warm and periods of cool … the line is not flat.
If you can get your hands on the March 2009 issue of Quaternary Research, there are several articles in there that one might find interesting.
One of those things is Figure 7 on page 178 which shows the North American jet stream slowly moving back toward where it was during the last ice age over the past 9000 years. 9kya the jet came ashore at about the Southernmost tip of coastal Alaska. My 6kya that had moved South a little and the jet itself changing from blowing inland for a significant distance before turning South to going South immediately, Today the mean jet location arrives at about the Washington/Canadian border. 9,000 years ago Boise was on the “warm” side of the jet. Today Boise is on the “cold” side. 18kya the jet went South long before reaching the North American coast and came ashore at about Los Angeles, went straight across to about Florida and then up the East coast. But it was a split flow with a smaller stream across Alaska, Northern Canada and then dipping down at about the Eastern Great Lakes with a midwestern “glacial anticyclone” that was sort of an atmospheric gyre between the two jets.
1933 didn’t get as warm as the MWP. 1998 didn’t get as warm as 1933. Overall we have been in a long, slow cooling trend for a very long time. The past 2000 years or so seems to have steepened the cooling trend.
bill (15:31:33) :
“Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.”
A few typos there Bill, we all make them, let me correct you.
“Which could be more accurate a man with drill and a pre-set agenda or a piece of electronics simply relaying the data it is designed to collect. I would suggest it is not the former.”
bill (17:20:00) :
Graeme Rodaughan (16:44:59) :
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is
floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science?
(As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.
You’re joking of course
If it’s floating/moving for Catlin its floating/moving for Wegener isn’t it?
Catlin are measuring a stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few cm. Wegener are measuring a different stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few 10s of cm. Both cannot ever measure the same ice again. Which is doing the beter science?
The plane can easily follow a GPS Track, and time the flight to the same dates on a subsequent year. Hence the data recording is repeatable and a trendline could be established.
The catlin expedition is inherently un-repeatable because they can’t guarantee that they could follow the same path on co-responding dates on a subsequent year.
Not joking.
Think of it this way.
In both cases, the ice is a moving target. For the plane, the path taken is repeatable – because the are flying above the ice and hence decoupled from it.
A team walking on the ice, are not able to repeat their path, because they will be moved around with the ice. I.e. they are coupled with the ice.
It’s the decoupling of the measuring device from the ice, that allows for the repeatability of the measurements.
The fact that the Catlin teams “work” is inherently unrepeatable, renders it non-science, and it defaults to a stunt.
Given the German expeditions finding ice to be thicker than expected, and the current arctic ice extent being at a 7 year high, and at that high for about the last month.
Claims that the Arctic is melting to hell are just crazy hyperbole that is divorced from the physical evidence.
Cheers G
Mike Bryant (17:16:49) :
“A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set.”
The Catlin experiment IS repeatable. They only have to be dropped off next year in the same place, have their equipment fail at the same time, have the storms arrive at the same time, drill holes in the ice haphazardly in the exact same locations, have the ice drift exactly as it did the year before, depend on the wind blowing in the same direction (for navigation purposes), get lots of tent time in the exact same locations, stick to first year ice, get picked up early and be the toast of London and the good Prince!!!
What could be easier?
Mike – you keep blowing holes in my propositions… What am I going to do???
The good Prince on duty: click
bill 17:20:00, the Wegener Institute can repeat the exact same flight path and measurements for subsequent years, the catlin expedition cannot.
Smokey (18:41:59) :
Oh, for those simpler days of droit de seigneur
bill (17:20:00) :
“You’re joking of course
If it’s floating/moving for Catlin its floating/moving for Wegener isn’t it?
Catlin are measuring a stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few cm. Wegener are measuring a different stretch of ice to an accuracy of a few 10s of cm. Both cannot ever measure the same ice again. Which is doing the beter science”
Taking your last point first – which is doing the better science – That is an excellent and enquiring question – On one hand we have a team whose progress and sample-space is measured in metres per hour to a three-digit precision while on the other we have a survey three/four orders of magnitude greater in extent and periodicity with a corresponding diminution of precision.
On the “If it’s floating/moving for Catlin its floating/moving for Wegener isn’t it?” point – I’m less certain of your stance mate. GIven the distance travelled by a DC3 and a Caitliner in any given time – I’d be thinking that floating/moving is much less an issue for the former than the latter!
Great questions by the way- Welcome to WUWT
HTH
Roy
bill,
You must face the stark truth that the Catlin expedition was nothing more than a publicity stunt funded by a billion dollar insurance company based in Bermuda. It was also an environmentally destructive stunt for the little data they managed to get…
The more alarmist reports the Catlin Team sends into the world about the Arctic, the bigger the scam.
The entire skeptic blog community is reporting on their findings and all they achieve is that they turn themselves into a bunch of cheating nitwits.
neill (16:02:28) :
Very likely this year. Another cool summer in Alaska (though El Nino might warm things up some). I’m expecting that the NW Passage won’t open this year, and we might encourage the media to cover some of the planned trips through it. There ought to be some glaciers that came through the winter pretty well, call attention to them.
Of course, it will just be winter, not climate.
Another magnificent piece:
http://web.me.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2009/5/17_Dystopian_Luvvies.html
My favorite example of too much precision (not accuracy) was when the Catlin folks would report their estimated distance to the pole to two decimal places. They didn’t do it every time but on 24 April 2009 was the following.
“Weather Cloudy
-20°C?
Present location 84°52’55″N
125° 54’ 42” W
Total distance travelled 355.58 km
Average daily distance 6.7 km
Estimated distance to North Pole 568.93 km
Time on ICE 53 days ”
Was that 568.93 km from the middle of their camp or from its most northerly point?
And the ice was moving remember. How many metres per minute was the ice moving?
Ya know, I think “The Day After Tomorrow” was a pretty good, low budget Sci-Fi yarn about AGW. Some good action, actors (ahem, characters) you could care about, and enough interesting science bits to grab ya. Kudos to the team that made that yarn.
And that’s the key. It was a good story; I think told well as long as there was “suspension of disbelief”. The problem is that many came away from that flick with the same thoughts as Gore’s Inconvienent Truth. and failed to kick in “Real World”. One was a yarn, the other propaganda. Interesting how the same set, (the breakup of the ice shelf) appeared in both…
Mike
If the Catlin program shows up on ScienceDaily.com, we’ll know it has reached the deepest depths of mediocrity 🙂
The Catlin Expedition planned to use the radar sled to map the ice thickness and drilled holes to calibrate the radar. A very standard geophysical practice. The radar broke. Not the least bit surprising as the Canadian winter has a habit of harshly testing new geophysical instruments. As a result all the Catlin Expedition produced was a small excel spread sheet of random drill holes primarily confined to thin first year ice.
The Wegener Institute used an electromagnetic sensor in a towed “bird”. A technique used to survey large areas quickly and efficiently for at least 40 years. I don’t know the sample rate but I suspect that it was several times a second. This will result in a continuous profile over thousands of precisely defined kilometers of survey. In minutes the towed EM system would have given more useable data than Catlin produced in over two months.
It will be interesting to compare the two sets of results with satellite data.
EM birds are usually towed by helicopters except in flat terraine such as inland Australia and the arctic where fixed wing aircraft are more efficient. (I suspect the EM bird used on the Wegener Polar 5 flight was first tested using a helicopter.) I understand the current EM bird was first tested with the Polar 5 aircraft over the Canadian Shield.
(Towed magnetometers date from the 1940’s, the targets were submarines).
PS EM birds shatter when they hit the ice!
Bill
Having spent time drilling holes in ice on Alaskan rivers to check ice thickness for winter truck road crossings I can assure you that without a power auger (which i assume the Catlin expedition didn’t have) , drilling holes through ice is a lot of hard work. I have my doubts as to how many holes in the ice the Catlin expedition actually drilled since they were pulling sleds, making and breaking camp and just trying to survive.
Even on river ice we would drill through the smooth parts of the ice as that was the thinnest , whereas jumbled up ice was nearly always thicker. Since they were traveling over paths of smoother ice, I doubt the sampling really was a true representation of the overall ice thickness. I would bet the flyover measurements were a better representation of ice thickness.
Never before have so few gone so far to prove so little.
I have been reading Ian Plimer’s new book. He claims the descent to the LIA was just 23 years. I find that pretty scary but maybe worth it to stop the carping about AGW.
Ron de Haan (19:08:27) :
The more alarmist reports the Catlin Team sends into the world about the Arctic, the bigger the scam.
The entire skeptic blog community is reporting on their findings and all they achieve is that they turn themselves into a bunch of cheating nitwits.
I agree with Ron, – the Catlin Team are rapidly building a Petard on which to Hoist themselves.
… make that an Australian Barking Cat …
The comment was:
—————
bill (15:31:33) :
1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
—————
[1] So, because you haven’t seen a Wegener report, one doesn’t exist?
.
[2] One should expect almost zero drift from an aircraft owing to the greater flight stability of that platform. Helicopters are notoriously unstable in flight owing to the vibrations caused by the blades and the less than optimal aerodynamics of the hull. The downward pulsation of air caused by the blades would indeed have significant affect upon a towed aerial object in its wake.
.
[3] If it is your supposition that a device which —having been tested and =proven= to be highly accurate to a few thousandths of an inch/meter— cannot produce a MORE accurate measurement than a human with a tape measure, itself having no smaller subdivision of measurement than a tenth of an inch, then I will be asking that you produce sufficient evidence of that with proofs and double-blind peer reviewed results.
.
Additionally, the mere act of disturbing the surface of the ice presents the problem of: How much surface ice did the measurer remove to make his measurement?
.
Further what of the punch-through and breakage of the undersurface of the ice happened which would directly affected the manual measurements?
.
The quintessence of your remarks is tantamount to proclaiming that a simple hourglass exceeds the accuracy of a cesium beam time-frequency standard.
.
Further to that is the fact that U.S. Submarines used upwards looking sonar to determine the thickness of ice at the pole in order to determine places were they might surface, i.e., breach the ice.
.
One of the MOST NOTABLE aspects of those sonographs was that the underside of the sea ice had undulating features such as present a quandary: what is the average thickness of the ice overall?
.
A person standing on the upper surface and making measurements CANNOT determine whether he is standing over a thinner or thicker part of that ice. Therefore he cannot remark with ~any~ degree of certitude regarding his findings, and instead may =only= declare findings the AT THOSE SPECIFIC LOCATIONS he made his measurements — AND NO PLACE ELSE.
.
Declaring otherwise would be not unlike three blind men describing an elephant!
.
Ergo, the essence of your remarks gives one to question the motives for your post.
crosspatch (18:25:05) :
1933 didn’t get as warm as the MWP. 1998 didn’t get as warm as 1933. Overall we have been in a long, slow cooling trend for a very long time. The past 2000 years or so seems to have steepened the cooling trend.
This can be seen clearly in the plot, from wikipedia ice core:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Vostok-ice-core-petit.png/400px-Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
The compressed holocene shows the slide to cool.
Hmmm, let me see, 100 days of floating ice vs. 100 hrs. of floating ice. Which of these scenario’s do you suppose is going to be more accurate?
To think that walking the Arctic for 100 days (actually, only 73) and only making it half way to the pole, is a more accurate method of data gathering than flying, covering hundreds of miles per day, 1000’s of times the coverage, in a fraction of the time. WOW! All I can say here Bill is WOW! Perhaps you should sign up for next years Catlin mission?
“Stupid is as stupid does” .. “Your wealth of ignorance is astounding”
The Catlin expedition lost all credibility early on when their real-time “telemetry” was exposed as fraudulent. What is interesting in all this is the conscious manipulation of public opinion via what a public relations specialist would call “hooks”. In politically charged situations, “truth” is almost irreverent. Since the audience is predisposed to believe that which fits its “preconception” all one has to provide in order to maintain a following is to provide a logical “hook” on which that following can hang their hats when contrary facts are presented.
When the satellite data clearly showed the Arctic sea ice “extent” was expanding, the “warming” crowd countered with, “Yes, but the thickness is diminishing.” That hook appeared relatively safe, since hard data on thickness was non-existant, save a few easily challenged U.S. Army buoy readings.
Then, ironically, the Catlin crew (warmers all) set out to drag an experimental radar skid across the ice to the north pole to “prove” the ice was thinning. When that skid failed, the crew resorted to hand drilling. Simultaneously, another expedition flew a radar platform over the Arctic ice and apparently found the ice thicker than expected. Now, in a really exquisite example of tortured logic, I see a reader presenting yet another “hook” by claiming the Catlin “hand job”, performed under conditions the Catlin crew regularly described in their daily reports as horrendous, is superior to the other expedition’s radar data. Must I remind that contributor that the Catlin expedition’s first choice was “radar data” and would have happi;y settled for that had their skid not failed?
What seems lost to both sides of the argument is that neither the Catlin crew’s suspect hand-measurements not the other expedition’s radar data prove anything at all because, as near as I can determine, a baseline of previous ice thickness had never been established. Thicker than what? Thinner than what? look at the answers you read: “Thicker or thinner than expected.”
I’m sorry, but when I received my training in the scientific method, “expected” was not a quantifiable scientific reference point from which to depart.
bill (18:00:41) :
J.Hansford (17:24:25) :
Bill…. Wegener’s team have tested the equipment by drilling holes to compare with electronic readings….. Any Arctic ice will do.
Did you see my post above with the grapic from their poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
Measurements seem to be out by 1 metre in 3 in a 600metre run.,
What the $%^& are you talking about?
Better go to bed if you cannot read a plot you provide. The error in thickness is at most 20cm with a systematic bias towards thinness
Gordon Ford (19:59:22) :
The Catlin Expedition planned to use the radar sled to map the ice thickness and drilled holes to calibrate the radar. A very standard geophysical practice. The radar broke. Not the least bit surprising as the Canadian winter has a habit of harshly testing new geophysical instruments. As a result all the Catlin Expedition produced was a small excel spread sheet of random drill holes primarily confined to thin first year ice.
The Wegener Institute used an electromagnetic sensor in a towed “bird”. A technique used to survey large areas quickly and efficiently for at least 40 years. I don’t know the sample rate but I suspect that it was several times a second. This will result in a continuous profile over thousands of precisely defined kilometers of survey. In minutes the towed EM system would have given more useable data than Catlin produced in over two months.
——————-
May I suggest a technical compromise. Tow Mr. Pen from a line behind an airplane, crossing and re-crossing the ice in a grid pattern to estimate a representative sample of ice thickness.
It will certainly be more accurate and less biased than his false claims of results from his hand-run ice auger. I recall that one of the wattsup bloggers accurately predicted the conclusions of Pen’s “research” at the outset of the expedition – so Pen and his colleagues did not have to suffer through all that cold after all – his results were already known!
In the Woody Allen movie Zelig, the family had lived over a bowling alley. Zelig’s parents argued so much that the bowling alley complained about the noise.
From Catlin’s site:
“The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first-year ice.”
Predominately THICK first year ice??? I thought they told the press it was thin??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
As Anthony has already demonstrated, their route was PLANNED to be on first year ice!! THICK first year ice complicated their plans!!
This finding actually compares well with the radar flight by the Wegner Institute which also found thicker than average first and second year ice.
Given that the Catlin Team were constantly referring to the fact that their GPS wasn’t working and that they were navigating by “wind and sun” all other arguments aside, their “experiment” is not repeatable because if what they were saying is true, they have no way to verify the exact geographic location of their holes (not even within 20 meter accuracy).
Being able to measure the ice at a specific geographic location is the key.
The Catlin fraud is so obvious and yet nobody in the MSM sees the naked emperor do they?
The Arctic ice consists of some fifteen million square kilometres and the Catlin crew drilled no more than a couple of hundred holes on a route that deliberately took them over first year ice.
The crew said they would find thin ice before they embarked and they certainly found what they were looking for didnt they?
The findings were ready for publication before they set foot on the ice, this is anti science at its worst and typical of the dishonest nature of the AGW/MMCC narrative, show business science like Bart Simpson putting a hamster in a plane for his science project.
Anthony – I know this is OT but have you noticed that http://www.climate4you.com/ has started a Urban heat Island effect section where they are doing the same as you’ve done, attached a thermometer to a car and driven from one side of a city to the other – they then print out the result.
also worth checking out is their sea level data from 1992. The site just gets better every day.
REPLY: Good to see that. Replication is the sincerest form of flattery. – Anthony
Just a theory here, why did the expedition veer south east during the latter part of the trip?
Could it be that the team found thicker ice than expected on their original route so took the decision to depart from the direct route to find the thinner ice to the south they so desperately needed to find?
I find it difficult to believe that the radar unit failed, its just too convenient, the radar unit cant lie, it reports exactly what it finds where hand drilling can be highly selective, you look for surface clues and drill where it looks thinnest, the opportunity for fraud is higher when manual drilling is used.
I hope someone traces the actual route of the Catlin crew and compares it to sattelite images of where the multiyear ice was at the time of the Catlin route diversion.
My theory of course is not proof of anything and nobody is going to diagnose the radar fault and nobody can prove that the route diversion was anything other than what they claim it was, but it does smell rather fishy to me.
James Allison (16:45:24) : The way I see it is that during the 60’s and early 70’s there wasn’t sufficient MSM coverage of alarmist global cooling to create any mass hysteria.
No need to speculate. I lived through it (as did several other regulars here). I clearly remember it being front and center of several publications and fairly widely discussed (not as much as AGW today, but quite enough for awareness). What happened? Despite some nervous hand wringers, most folks just took the position:
“Oh, that’s interesting, I guess. We can’t change it. It’s a long way off? Guess we’ll just cope with whatever happens when it happens.”
There were also a fair number of folks who were rightly skeptical that anyone could predict anything with accuracy into the future (and they tended to react with “Oh, that’s interesting; and probably nonsense…” )
And there were a fair number of technical folks who generally had the attitude “Ok, we can deal with cold. Don’t like it, but we’ve dealt with cold before in Alaska (or Norway or…)”
Flash forward and alarmist global warming is splattered all over both the internet and MSM. But what Hadlow and his alarmist colleagues don’t appreciate is that we (the general public) fully understand the internet’s capacity to produce instant “mis”information
Well, I think they also don’t appreciate the degree to which TV has taught folks about snake oil salesmen and the degree to which folks just don’t trust any politician. They ought to remember that it is an almost universally understood joke punch line to say “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you!” …
It certainly runs through my brain any time someone says “the government can help” with whatever…
I’d take the University data anyday over a failed expedition mentally stuck back in the turn of the nineteenth century. Oh sure, it’s a dashing story, but it didn’t get the job done, and that’s what counts.
“So the question is – why does the suspect Catlin data get unlimited press coverage, while the comprehensive data of the Wegener Institute gets buried by the press? Is it possible that some members of the press have an agenda?”
Seen as you ask the question, I follow quite a few news sites on the interent, this site is the only one that I have read about the Catlin Survey, so I wouldnt go so far as to call the press coverage unlimited, in fact how many posts have you yourself done on the Wegener Survey as compared to the Catlin? are you part of the agenda?
There is a rather significant qualification to the Wegener Institute’s story: they say their data “ … leads to the conclusion that Arctic ice cover recovers temporarily.” This seems like a hefty nod in the direction of political correctness, and gives ammunuition to the more comedic of the alarmist fanatics, who leaped on it with crows of delight. Does the Institute (or anyone else) have long-term data that shows that the 2009 ice thickness recovery can only be temporary?
JLKrueger (22:47:56) :
Given that the Catlin Team were constantly referring to the fact that their GPS wasn’t working and that they were navigating by “wind and
Wrong they used it sparingly to conserve batteries.
anna v (20:52:47) :
What the $%^& are you talking about?
Better go to bed if you cannot read a plot you provide. The error in thickness is at most 20cm with a systematic bias towards thinness.
wrong at 295 metres error is about 800cm at a ground based reading of 3.1metres. Also check out the error at 0 metres.
Highlander (20:42:35) :
1] So, because you haven’t seen a Wegener report, one doesn’t exist?
None is published yet – never said one would not be written. They say greater than last year -have youo seen that report. How were the measurements made? this was the 1st flight behind plane. helicopters will not reach the NP
[3] If it is your supposition that a device which —having been tested and =proven= to be highly accurate to a few thousandths of an inch/meter— cannot produce a MORE accurate measurement than a human with a tape measure, itself having no smaller subdivision of measurement than a tenth of an inch,
Where is your evidence for this accurtacy and its proving? I would expect that the tape was in cm with subdivisions of mm. THEIR plot does not show this mm accuracy.
Additionally, the mere act of disturbing the surface of the ice presents the problem of: How much surface ice did the measurer remove to make his measurement?
How does the electronics KNOW where the ice surface is?
Further what of the punch-through and breakage of the undersurface of the ice happened which would directly affected the manual measurements?
Agreed
The anti-Wegener bias is huge and shocking but we have already learned that the postmodern journalism is pretty much incompatible with basic human ethics, so there’s no news here.
177 centimeters being both “first year ice” and “thin” is a very amusing kind of lie. According to both common sense as well as technical terminology, 177 cm is a very thick first-year ice. In fact, thick first-year ice starts at 120 cm, search for 120 anywhere here:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=167&Lang=eng
http://www.awi.de/fileadmin/user_upload/MET/PolarsternCoursePlot/ICE.html
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ice/sea_ice.shtml
Well, Nature has been very nice to Pen Hadow et al. and kindly allowed them to survive, so they revenge by emitting piles of lies directed against Her laws.
I live relatively close to Pen Hadow and it is likely he will giving a talk locally on his expedition.
If i get the chance to go along and ask questions could we come up with a consensus on which ones to ask-say three of them?
I will not make ad hom attacks-whatever I think about the dubious scientific merit of the expedition it takes a lot of courage to do what he attempted in such severe conditions. Which of course could be one of the questions to be asked;
“Pen,
Were the conditions more severe than you had been planning for?”
Any other suggestions from anyone?
TonyB
E.M. Smith (23.42)
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” – gotta be a contender for QOTW
Any thoughts on the idea contained in my second paragraph?
“The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind,” said Nigel Calder, a former editor of “New Scientist.”
And now new scientist says.
“Who sparked the global cooling myth?”
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/global-cooling-was-a-myth.html
Regarding “agendas”, check out The State of the World Forum. http://www.worldforum.org/
It is an appeal to that demographic known as the Cultural Creatives, who are a growing segment of the voting public. The State of the World Forum’s members, including Gorbachev, appeal to Obama and other leaders, to drive forward the issue of climate change, because climate change is the one issue that can most appeal to the sensibilities of Cultural Creatives. Climate Change = Cultural Creatives. Cultural Creatives are the largest growing voting demographic. Any kind of change will require their support.
Now for my 2 cents. The leaders who are driving forward CC are not themselves CC. I think they know and understand the potential of CC and are simply using that issue with that demographic. The bigger (and real) issues are about global economic infrastructure and governance. CC is simply a way to package grand restructuring into something CC will feel for and vote for.
Cultural Creatives are not particularly concerned with the economy, and Obama knows this. But the power they will give him may give America sufficient power to lead through with other kinds of global changes. Read the chairman of The State of the World Forum’s ideas about how USA needs to be the “last empire”, by using its status and power to drive through a new structure for the world. No Cultural Creative would understand this nor be interested in such a project–it may even be anathema to them–but the “global” aspect of Climate Change is the necessary sexy voting issue to gain support for such shifts in global structure and power. Climate Change even has Cultural Creatives saying things like, “democracy is just greedy people voting for polluting industries” (words to that effect). CC are now in a trance and would accept anything.
One day Cultural Creatives will wake up and wonder what on earth happened.
Up-to-date arctic sea-ice graphics.
Extent difference
Difference in sea-ice extent between 2009 and recent years
Melt Rate
2009(blue) daily melt rate of Arctic sea-ice compared to 2008(red)
——-
2009(blue) daily melt rate of Arctic sea-ice compared to 2007(magenta)
*Data retrieved from JAXA
Telegraph blogger mentions WUWT!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/james_delingpole/blog/2009/05/15/global_warming_explorers_in_arctic_get_nasty_shock_polar_ice_caps_blooming_freezing
88 comments. It’s been hard to find anyone who will mention Pen Hadow and offer comments at the same time, most likely for fear that they will end up here and actually learn something…
The Catlin fraud is complete. They could not progress due to the extreme cold, and they now falsely claim they were pulled off due to early melt.
They imply this early melt is earlier than ‘normal’ which is of course *proof* of AGW.
In fact they never got close their objective, they never were objective, they were dangerously under-prepared, and their ‘results’ were determined before they left.
Typical AGW scam.
Catlin = fraud = AGW
Smokey
Was catching up with WUWT on my lunch break when I saw your Prince Charles post. Am now attempting to clean my laptop after spraying it with a mouthful of coffee.
Bill
Looking at the graph you linked to, my reading is that the ice had moved by the time when they did the ground measurements. If you look at the two curves there is an impressive fit if you allow about a 10-20m horizontal shift between the them. This would make the error of 20 in 600 in position rather than 1in 3 in thickness.
I am not saying one is right and one is wrong, I am simply pointing out that there are alternative views that must be considered.
I am open-minded and resent attempts to close down debate. Attempting to “score points” seems pretty puerile, and many AGW promotors seem to be taking an increasingly puerile approach – see posts above re Monbiot’s latest Royal Flush contribution.
TonyB,
These questions aren’t meant to be snarky or ad hominem, although they are aggressive. It’s important to be transparent about the motivation for and quality of the expedition.
1. What was the Catlin Insurance Group’s investment in this exercise and how are the results going to be used to assess risk?
2. What liability does Catlin incur if it bases risk assessments on inaccurate data?
3. How does your survey address the criticism that the data collection methods were inadequate to answer the question, “Is arctic ice thinning?”
kuhnkat (22:05:33) :
From Catlin’s site:
““The ice thickness measurements that Pen and the team have been able to phone in imply that they are travelling over predominantly thick first-year ice.”
Predominately THICK first year ice??? I thought they told the press it was thin??”
Unfortunately, the Catlin website was putting out enough info that they are getting caught trying to unravel their own statements. In addition to kuhnkat’s catch here’s some more.
1) On April 2 Hadow reported “We’ve noticed that the ice is older and thicker than before”. When you were interviewed at the pick up site, he indicated that the ice was expected to be “much thicker” than the 1.77m average recorder during the trek.
2) The Catlin website reports “First year ice is typically thinner than 2 m, while Multi-year ice is generally thicker than 3 m.” Since the route was primarily planned over first year ice, how is an average measurement of 1.77m surprising?
3) Also on the website it is claimed: “The Catlin Arctic Survey’s route was specifically designed so that the team would begin the expedition on multi-year ice, transit briefly through a region primarily covered with first-year ice, then enter a region in which second-year ice now prevails.” The track of the route clearly shows most of the transit over primarily first year ice.
4) The expedition was terminated after 73 days of the 100 days planned, largely explained by the onset of ice melt. This is in spite of the 3rd slowest April ice melt recorded in the recent past. That would suggest that under recent ice melts history the plan was too ambitious?
Please feel free to add other discrepancies. Maybe some journalist with cajones will be at the press conferences. Of course, how could I be skeptical of a WWF sponsored “scientific expedition” with a stated mission to discover how the Arctic ice is thinning.
OT: UK medical and climate specialists issue the dumbest report I have ever seen:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17126-climate-change-diagnosed-as-biggest-global-health-threat.html
They claim that each society has a range of optimal temperatures in which to survive (I go along with htat) then claim that 70,000 people died in the heat wave of 2003. Of course that heat wave is a sign of what is to come. No mention of the lack of air conditioning, caregiving from relatives who were on vacation etc. They claim thet every single medical condition knopw to man will worsen. No mention of the fact that people adapt and already live in warm climates successfully. Nor that cooling would be drastically worse. So they imply that a constatnt temperature is best.
Wait! Could this be a satire?
In today’s Chicago Tribute (5/18/09), the weather page has the following headlines: “The Arctic Ocean: Ice in retreat”
http://weblogs.wgntv.com/chicago-weather/tom-skilling-blog/2009/05/the-arctic-ocean-ice-in-retrea.html
Statements made include: The area of open water is increasing during the summer… it is projected that the ocean might be totally ice free…A graphic showing a world map of “changing global temperatures” show the world to increasing by 4 to 9 degrees F by 2100.
Please send your thoughts on this major US Newspaper making these statements to.
TSkilling@tribune.com
Send your thoughts to their top chief meteorologist: Tom Skilling
Seems like “Back to School” …
[after Diane gives Thornton an ‘F’ for his report, which was actually written by Kurt Vonnegut]
Diane: Whoever *did* write this doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!
[cut to Thornton’s dorm suite]
Thornton Melon: [on the phone] … and *another* thing, Vonnegut! I’m gonna stop payment on the cheque!
[Kurt tells him off]
So why did Hadow and friends do this?
1. Go to a polar region and risk one’s life.
2. Take half-as…d measurements to seem scientific and busy.
3. Get the obligatory frostbite and complain like hell about conditions.
4. Enlist the royal buffoon’s support.
5. Unleash your secret weapon – i.e. lie like hell when you get back.
6. Write up what you want people to believe.
7. Learn never to do anything so stupid again.
8. Sit back and get the inevitable knighthood for proving that you are the most stupid person on the planet.
Let me take a stab at this. bill are you listening? The Caitlin survey took sporadic measurements approximately the distance from Boston to Buffalo, ( a good percentage of that distance was due to ice movement), and are then able to confidently extrapolate the ice thicknesses for an area the size of the continental U.S.? Give me a break!! Your eyes and mind are fully closed. As fatbigot said a few threads ago ( I am still laughing at that one ) ” Oh, It’s a stool alright”. :^D
jack mosevich (06:49:44) :
They claim thet every single medical condition knopw to man will worsen.
Including frostbite? Oh, my!
Mark
Re: early summer ice melt in the Arctic
Current temperatures in the Canadian far north are Resolute -12 C and Alert -11 C. The high temperature Monday in Resolute is forecast to be -9 C. If there is melting going on, it is not the air temperature that is doing it!
bill
“wrong at 295 metres error is about 800cm at a ground based reading of 3.1metres. Also check out the error at 0 metres.”
800cm is 8 meters – off the scale of the graph. Why don’t you re-think your statement and get back to us.
Bill:
Further what of the punch-through and breakage of the undersurface of the ice happened which would directly affected the manual measurements?
—
The “lies” of the Catlin expedition occur ENTIRELY in the deliberate selection of WHERE those not-taken-at-random few data points were drilled:
Leave aside the “let’s scrape off the snow from the top of the ice” and let’
s “pull-up-randomly-harder-or-softer-against-the-bottom-of-the-ice” or “let’s decide WHEN and WHERE to drill a hole = drill ONLY where the ice is flat (low), smoother (short-lived, shallower, flatter, recently frozen) and non-random.
At least the ice radar would have recorded the deeper bumps and ridges that they walked over, but by deliberastely only drilling a few spots, they can/could ignore ANY evidence of deep ice areas as they manufactored data to fit their preconceptions, paid for BY a insuracne company with pre-conceptions, FOR an audiance that DEMANDED pre-conceived ideas of global warming.
And you see no “projudices”? No biases? But YOU are the side of the argument that claims sponsorship (by an energy company) is solely a reason for rejecting scientific data?
I explicitly do NOT trust the Catlin “scientists” to produce valid data: they are being paid, and have paid physically, incredible prices to produce ONLY ONE RESULT (that AGW is “real” and that the polar ice is melting according to AGW theory.
An unbiased, simple air-borne ice radar IS more credible because the Catlin team is biased and unreliable and unaudited.
And – every time ANYBODY has actually checked their data, their quotes, their measurements, their metrology, their course, their biometrics, their sampling methos – the Catlin team has been found to be fabricating data and exaggerating their results.
Tony B:
I would ask something like:
Pen, have you been able to compare your results with those from the Polar 5 team, I believe you reported spotting their plane flying over your position a few times – their results directly contradict yours, do you have any idea why?
or
Pen, have you been in touch with NSDIC regarding the early summer melt which forced you to leave – they have reported a verly slow spring melt so far, but I understand their numbers are based on extrapolation/logarithms/computer models whereas you have actual measurements to correct their findings?
Resurrecting the ghost of Karl Popper once again, if I may: For the Catlin team actually to have done SCIENCE, they would have had to take with them a few more (independent) teams, which would attempt to duplicate their findings, inasmuch as the constantly varying condition of their study precludes attempted duplication at a later time. So: say I question the accuracy of their findings, even question if their data are actual measurements (or were made up): How can they respond? They would be, and in fact are, asking us to take their data ON FAITH, and that is, per se, not science. And, just for the record (although I kind of hate to say it), the same is true for the fly-over data. They too needed to have built-in replication by other independent teams for it to be science, otherwise they too are asking us to take their findings on faith.
“”” Graeme Rodaughan (16:44:59) :
bill (15:31:33) :
1 Alfred Wegener have published no data as far as I know
2 It is inaccurate from their own poster:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2171/hembird.jpg
when towed behind a helicopter frequently 10% adrift with one 30% failure
what happens when towed behind a plane?
Which could be more accurate a man with drill and tape or a piece of electronics trying to determine the snow-ice interface. I would suggest the former.
What should have happened is for the catlin route to be traversed to do a check on results.
Catlin say somewhere that the say a plane flying low on a number of occasions – perhaps Alfred Wegener were doing just that?
I just don’t understand, – how is using a tape measure and holes drilled through ice, that is floating/moving on the sea surface Repeatable Science? (As opposed to a non-repeatable publicity stunt).
A flight path can be recorded and reflown at the same time next year to provide a repeatable data set. “””
Well i’ve never ever measured an ice thickness; but I have seen a whole lot of video footage taken under floating sea ice; and the most apparent characteristic that comes to mind, is that the bottom of floating sea ice is anything but flat; it looks like inverted mountain ranges.
So boring a hole, and sticking a tape down through it; is about as reliable as poking a wet fingure in the air to meaure wind direction.
I hate to keep repeating myself; but do any climatology school courses teach about the Nyquist sampling theorem, when they discuss sampled data systems. My guess is the Catlin Arctic survey team didn’t bore enough holes to properly sample so much as a single acre plot of ice; let alone the whole Arctic ocean; and much of the distance they travelled was backwards around the pole, so hardly representative of even a meridional slice.
A sheer waste of time and money; not to mention the public air waves.
The UAF-led expedition, which also includes lead researchers Cathleen Geiger and Chandra Kambhamettu of the University of Delaware and Jacqueline Richter-Menge of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, begins April 1. The field expedition is part of the Sea Ice Experiment: Dynamic Nature of the Arctic project, dubbed SEDNA, which is part of UAF’s collaborative International Polar Year research efforts.
Hutchings said the fieldwork will involve deploying buoys and other instruments to measure the movement and stress of the ice pack in the area around the field camp.
“We are going to use that information to validate the current generation of sea ice models,” Hutchings said. “We are trying to reduce the uncertainty of our prediction of arctic climate change.”
$1.4M
————–
Wide-Band Radar for Measuring Thickness of Sea Ice
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Saturday, November 01 2008
This instrument could contribute to understanding of climate change.
advertisement:
A wide-band penetrating radar system for measuring the thickness of sea ice is under development. The need for this or a similar system arises as follows: Spatial and temporal variations in the thickness of sea ice are important indicators of heat fluxes between the ocean and atmosphere and, hence, are important indicators of climate change in polar regions. A remote-sensing system that could directly measure the thickness of sea ice over a wide thickness range from aboard an aircraft or satellite would be of great scientific value. Obtaining thickness measurements over a wide region at weekly or monthly time intervals would contribute significantly to understanding of changes in the spatial distribution and of the mass balance of sea ice.
A prototype of the system was designed on the basis of computational simulations directed toward understanding what signal frequencies are needed to satisfy partly competing requirements to detect both bottom and top ice surfaces, obtain adequate penetration despite high attenuation in the lossy sea-ice medium, and obtain adequate resolution, all over a wide thickness range. The prototype of the system is of the frequency-modulation, continuous-wave (FM-CW) type. At a given time, the prototype functions in either of two frequency-band/ operational-mode combinations that correspond to two thickness ranges: a lower-frequency (50 to 250 MHz) mode for measuring thickness greater than about 1 m, and a higher-frequency (300 to 1,300 MHz) mode for measuring thickness less than about 1 m. The bandwidth in the higher-frequency (lesser-thickness) mode is adequate for a thickness resolution of 15 cm; the bandwidth in the lower-frequency (greater-thickness) mode is adequate for a thickness resolution of 75 cm. Although a thickness resolution of no more than 25 cm is desired for scientific purposes, the 75-cm resolution was deemed acceptable for the purpose of demonstrating feasibility.
Why bother if the Germans have already done it? and more accurately!
———————–
Report Date : JUN 1991
Pagination or Media Count : 24
Abstract : Field trials using a man-portable Geonics, Ltd., EM31 electromagnetic induction sounding instrument, with a plug-in data processing module, for the remote measurement of sea ice thickness, are discussed. The processing module was made by Flow Research Inc., to directly measure sea ice thickness and show the result in a numerical display. The EM31-processing module system was capable of estimating ice thickness within 10% of the true value for ice from about 0.7 to 3.5 m thick, the oldest undeformed ice in the study area. However, since seawater under the Arctic pack ice has a relatively uniform conductivity (2.5 + or – 0.05 S/m), a simplified method, which can be used for estimating sea ice thickness using jet an EM31 instrument, is discussed. It uses only the EM31’s conductivity measurement, is easy to put into use and does not rely on theoretically derived look-up tables or phasor diagrams, which may not be accurate for the conditions of the area.
200mm accuracy in 2 metres!!
———————
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA286884&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
5% when resting on ice compared to drill hole reference
—————————–
Interesting but how much did thid cost
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA310887&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf
———————-
http://www.aspect.aq/docs/ASITW.schedule+abstracts.A4.pdf
Although the standard deviation of the difference between the thin ice thicknesses estimated from the SSM/I algorithm and AVHRR is ~0.05 m
The ULS records the two-way travel time of an acoustic pulse between the sensor and the ice from which the distance to the ice-water interface is calculated. At the same time, the pressure is measured which is converted into the ULS depth. In theory, the difference between the ULS depth relative to the water level and the distance to the ice equals the ice draft. For converting travel time to distance, however, the speed of sound along the path of the acoustic pulse needs to be known which usually cannot be measured simultaneously over the whole data acquisition period. Therefore, patches of open water or thin ice have to be identified in the data series which are used as “zero-draft” reference level to which the distance measurements are related. The identification of open water areas is the most critical point of the data processing which influences the accuracy of the ice draft measurements.
Upward looking sonar can only see the bottom of the ice and then have to calc thickeness!
The paper will summarize German activities and results of EM thickness sounding in the Southern Ocean, and will present operations of a unique helicopter-borne EM thickness sensor. The so-called EM-Bird is easy and inexpensive to use and operable from ice breakers and by any helicopter. Therefore, it can also be used by other research groups to extend the observational basis in the Southern Ocean. We suggest forming a group of key scientists possessing the required logistic background to initiate a systematic monitoring program of Southern Ocean sea ice thickness, based on repeated ship cruises and our EM equipment and experience.
Independent snow thickness measurements are still required for the important differentiation between snow and ice. We will present an approach to snow thickness measurements based on the simultaneous use of EM thickness and laser/DGPS freeboard measurements, and on efforts to integrate a ground penetrating radar system into an EM Bird.
(1) Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany.
Doesn’t seem to know snow thickness! (in 2006)
Measurements of EM, ice drilling and snow thickness were made at 1 to 2 m intervals along 13 transects (50 to 500m long) on 10 different ice floes. The ice thickness and snow depth ranged from 0.2 to 5 m and from 0.04 to 1m, respectively. This study investigated the effect of the saline slush snow layer over the sea ice and seawater-filled gap on the snow and sea ice thickness measured by EM. Results showed that for relatively smooth surface and thinner ice 3.5 m, with seawater-filled gaps between deformed ice floes, the simple model showed a large underestimating error over 50%. By developing the 1-D multi-layer deformed ice model considering slush snow and seawater-filled gaps, the error was decreased to below 30%.
http://www.aspect.aq/docs/ASITW.schedule+abstracts.A4.pdf interesting doc.
—————————
Analyzing the apparent conductivity data obtained by the electromagnetic induction technique and drill-hole measurements at same location allows the construction of a transform equation for the apparent conductivity and sea ice thickness. The verification of the calculated sea ice thickness using this equation indicates that the electromagnetic induction technique is able to determine reliable sea ice thickness with an average relative error of only 5.5%. The ice thickness profi les show the sea ice distribution in Neila Fjord is basically level with a thickness of 0.8–1.4 m.
Good old drill holes used as reference again!
——————————-
Shallow Climate, They can re-fly the EXACT route the following year, thereby establishing data points. This is not “faith”. The Caitlin expedition could not in a million years establish a baseline because they could never reproduce their journey. They sometimes could not even navigate using GPS.
George E. Smith (09:42:12) :
“A sheer waste of time and money; not to mention the public air waves.”
Actually not. This was a brilliantly executed marketing campaign to support sales of Catlin insurance products. And if you think about it, it has worked very well. Every time “Catlin” is mentioned in a newspaper or TV program around the world, it is essentially free advertising for the Catlin Group! How much would they have to spend to get this much advertising at standard rates? The “science” was just an afterthought, and as long as the Catlin Survey gets positive spin by the press, they will reap the benefits financially (from their cozy home in Bermuda).
Maybe for their next adventure, the Catlin Survey team can be sent to the beaches of the world to measure sea level rise using the same tape measure technique that proved so successful in the arctic!
TonyB, I am pleased that you are optimistic that they will actually take questions “off the floor” after their lecture. I am somewhat skeptical that any questions will be allowed. If they utilize a screening process, it is highly unlikely that any questions that elude to duplicity will be accepted. If you are able to attend such a lecture, and are unable to ask questions, it will still be of value if you are able to report back what transpired.
Stefan (04:23:30) :
Regarding “agendas”, check out The State of the World Forum. http://www.worldforum.org/
It is an appeal to that demographic known as the Cultural Creatives, who are a growing segment of the voting public. The State of the World Forum’s members, including Gorbachev, appeal to Obama and other leaders, to drive forward the issue of climate change, because climate change is the one issue that can most appeal to the sensibilities of Cultural Creatives. Climate Change = Cultural Creatives. Cultural Creatives are the largest growing voting demographic. Any kind of change will require their support.
Now for my 2 cents. The leaders who are driving forward CC are not themselves CC. I think they know and understand the potential of CC and are simply using that issue with that demographic. The bigger (and real) issues are about global economic infrastructure and governance. CC is simply a way to package grand restructuring into something CC will feel for and vote for.
Cultural Creatives are not particularly concerned with the economy, and Obama knows this. But the power they will give him may give America sufficient power to lead through with other kinds of global changes. Read the chairman of The State of the World Forum’s ideas about how USA needs to be the “last empire”, by using its status and power to drive through a new structure for the world. No Cultural Creative would understand this nor be interested in such a project–it may even be anathema to them–but the “global” aspect of Climate Change is the necessary sexy voting issue to gain support for such shifts in global structure and power. Climate Change even has Cultural Creatives saying things like, “democracy is just greedy people voting for polluting industries” (words to that effect). CC are now in a trance and would accept anything.
One day Cultural Creatives will wake up and wonder what on earth happened.
Stefan,
The Cultural Creatives make an integral part of the UN/Club of Rome alarmist strategy to put us in “Green Shackles”.
There task is to provide humanity new targets in a “carbon poor world”.
If there is one person in the world who knows how to promote the collapse of a “World Power”, it is Gorbatchev and Obama knows all the tricks from their books.
This organization is a direct threat of the free world.
Visit http://green-agenda.com to get informed about their real objectives.
Would it not be the case that drilling down to water is not in itself an indicator that one has reached the maximum thickness of the floating ice. After all, it appears to me almost trivially likely that the ice, often jumbled and multi-layered as it certainly is, must have pools or layers of water within its lower extent, such as would generate “false positives” for a pedestrian with a hand-drill?
That is unless they were, as has been suggested by an earlier poster, selecting only the FLAT stretches of ice, in which case the data is seriously corrupt in any case. I strongly suspect that the strongly subjective “I think I’ll drill a hole here” decisions made by a tired and half-frozen Penn Hadow would naturally tend towards selection of comparatively easy, flat, and therefore most likely thinner ice, than ridgy, boulder-strewn or uneven surfaces, which would be both harder to drill, and likely much thicker.
With regard to that. I completely fail to see the scientific value of haphazardly drilled holes. Surely the ONLY useful dataset would be one drawn either continuously or else at precisely regular intervals, hand-drill or no. Clusters of holes, followed by long, irregular marches, with long periods sitting around potential airstrips, simply can’t provide a fair record of thickness across the walked section. The only meaningful dataset would have involved Penn drilling a hole exactly every 100 meters, or kilometer or similar.
I assume all can see the reason why this must be true.
We still don’t have any pictures or other evidence that the Catlin Arctic Survey ever happended. We have pictures of them on the ice but what proof do we have that the survey pictures aren’t from the practice run near the island? Still waiting.
Gordon Ford (19:59:22) :
Claude Harvey (20:49:23) :
Jerry Gustafson (20:01:31) :
Bill (at various times) …
thanks for your comments …
Ron De Haan
Did you ever see my long posting about Agenda 21 an organisation mentioned in Green agenda? I followed up the political motives of the various chairs of the committees, downloaded the minutes, explored their aims and generally put the fear of god into Smokey when I posted it!
Tonyb
Ron and Smokey
Just to give Smokey another sleepless night, here are the minutes of the last Agenda 21 meeting held a few weeks ago which updates the post of mine that Smokey commented on.
http://unfccc.int/meetings/items/4381.php
TonyB
You should be ashamed of yourself – the institute’s research implies nothing like you suggest.
What is with you ~snip~. Is it that you don’t like the conclusion. Or you are sure that nothing ‘those kind of people’ (liberals?) say can be true. – Are you being paid ?
The basic mechanism (burning carbon -> increased CO2 -> increased heat retention -> global warming) is so obviously valid that it would require some very powerful opposing effect for it not to happen. You guys juggle with words, graphs, lie about what scientists say. – Why ?? You can’t bear someone else to be right ? You want your grandchildren to suffer ? You think it’s unAmerican to believe the energy technology our civilisation has developed might have bad effects.
Whatever your motive – unless you’re into punishing the next generation – you’re going to get something you don’t want.
It’s happening. It won’t be long. And you are going to be reviled – much good that’ll do anyone.
Doesn’t matter what your reason is
Frank K. (10:05:39) : In addition to benefiting Catlin Insurance, Pen and Ann will be in great demand as motivational speakers. You may recall that is what they were described as at the inception of the expedition.
TonyB,
I can’t find where I commented on your post. Was it in this thread?
tomm174 (12:50:45),
My advice: take an aspirin and lie down.
tomm174,
You are right. AGW skeptics are evil misanthropes hoping to destory mankind and end its future.
I think you brave, enlightened AGW true believers ought to take up Hansen’s advice and rid the world of those who unworthy-to-live souls who risk all of humanity by daring to challenge the great truth you have discovered.
How dare skeptics point out that the Earth climate is not changing outside the MOE. How dare those wicked skeptics doubt such selfless souls as Hansen and Gore. How dare skeptics doubt such humanitarians as Lovelock.
Smokey
No, it was several weeks ago following someones original post linking to this. Ring any bells?
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/032709_informationnote.pdf
Tonyb
“The verification of the calculated sea ice thickness using this equation indicates that the electromagnetic induction technique is able to determine reliable sea ice thickness with an average relative error of only 5.5%.”
This is the EM Bird towed by the Wegener mission.
American Thinker has a good write-up of the Catlin trip, and even calculates their carbon footprint for them!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_catlin_ice_follies.html
tomm174 (12:50:45) :
“…The basic mechanism (burning carbon -> increased CO2 -> increased heat retention -> global warming) is so obviously valid that it would require some very powerful opposing effect for it not to happen…..”
Like:
* NSIDC reports unprecedented Arctic sea ice rebuild over the last 2 years.
NSIDC also claimed that the previous decline of Arctic sea ice occurred faster than natural causes can explain, so it must be due to global warming
Logically, NSIDC then must also state that the recent ice rebuild has also occurred faster than natural causes can explain. However, to my knowledge they haven’t yet managed to offer an explanation for the ice rebuild, only for the melting.
* NSIDC: Antarctica is an example of regional cooling.
* There doesn’t seem to be any debate that both the AMO and PDO have shifted into multi-decadal cooling phases.
* There also doesn’t seem to be any debate that the sun is quieter than it has been for almost a century, after having gone through an extremely active period in the latter part of the 20th century. I make no claims here as to causation of global warming or cooling, yet the correlation is certainly striking.
* As the globe cools and ice builds, atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise per measurements at Mauna Loa.
What’s missing here…..?
More lies from the Catlin team?
TORONTO – British explorers in northern Canada to measure the thickness of floating Arctic sea ice had to end their expedition this week, far short of reaching the North Pole due to an early summer ice melt.
“This year, the summer melt came a little early,” Hadow said during a Webcast conference from Resolute Bay in northern Canada. “We would have rather reached the Pole if we could have, but we’ve always regarded (getting there) as the cherry on the cake.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30765212/
Yep I’m sure they would have made it to the North Pole if all of that thin first year ice they found hadn’t melted early!
They certainly don’t seem to let facts get in the way of their “science”…
I think an aspirin isn’t going to cut it. tomm174 [snip]. The Co2 THEORY has been found wanting, unless you TOTALLY ignore any evidence to the contrary. I have children, and they are going to have a bright future as will their children, for I will teach them to be adaptable, even if the temperatures begin to go outside of natural variance, WHICH IT HAS NOT!! The current cooling we are seeing negates any possibility that Co2 precedes temperature increase or affects temperature more than slightly. It is now AGW theorists who are in denial. Ignore any evidence contrary to your views. Utilize the precautionary principal. [snip]. It is quite funny to see the desperation in their posts, however. It gets more shrill every day. Grasping at straws when your beliefs do not stand under the light of truth. It must really hurt when mother nature won’t even play along. I spent 3 years living off the grid in Canada. Can you make that claim tomm174? I didn’t do it to save the planet. I did it to discover how difficult life would be without modern conveniences. Let me tell you, there is a reason life-span was so short as little as 100 years ago. Is this what you want for mankind? Technology is the path to enlightenment, as technology will find cleaner sources of energy in the near future. Not solar, not wind. Nuclear to start with and one day vacuum energy as Einstein and A.C.Clarke dreamed of. Going backwards will do more harm to “the children”. Do not attempt to force my children to have to live in the past. Life is brutal without technology. You are [snip] if you believe your view is the correct one.
Reply: Reign in the passion/insults David ~ charles the moderator
Will do. Thank you C -Mod ( your rapper name?) for letting this one pass.
If I may say so, it comes across more harshly with snips in. :^} Don’t you think?
tomm174?
and yeah, we’re all being paid by the letter to comment here. so we’re rollin’ in the clover big-time.
hee-hawww!!!!
Charles the Moderator (aka Jeez in his off hours) please assure me that Tomm174 is really one of “us” engaging in sarcasm. If you can’t, I just might have to revise my views on eugenics.
Reply: Could you please not say things like that? It really is pushing it. ~ ctmakajinhoh
The BBC has just interviewed the Catlin muppets on breakfast time TV – never said a word about the fact that they failed to even get halfway. But Pen Hadow did say they achieved all they set out to do, or somesuch.
I also had an email reply from BBC reporter, David Shukman, who was the ‘journalist’ who interviewed them as they packed it in. I berated him for failing to mention the halfway bit. He says he did state it in his report. He didn’t – until his later report. He also says, “I can’t answer for the biometric data on their website. A number of scientists have told me they value the data from the drill-holes. The expectation had been that there would be more multi-year ice.”
David Shukman (the same one who filed a TV report back in the summer that Tuvalu is still sinking) also stated that Mr Hadow said it was a “successful expedition”. I reminded him that a good journalist would question hadow’s definition of ‘successful’.
Woeful.
LOL @ tomm174 !!!
No really, that was absolutely HILARIOUS!
He had it all down… the lack of knowledge, the ridiculous belief that anyone who thinks differently must be getting paid, even the complete inability to understand that SCIENCE is not on the side of AGW theory.
It’s all about emotion, and tomm174’s post proves it beyond doubt.
So, like, for the children, like man, dude, let’s dismantle our civilization. Yeah. That’ll help them all!
I guess its the Hippies and radical environmentalists in control now.
Ohh and their big big effort to radical change the society trough the 1992 Rio-conference, UNFCCC, UNEP/IPCC etc etc .
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=464&Itemid=1
That means that the Kyoto II climate conferrence in Copenhagen later this year is not actually a conferenece on climate but instead a cinference on radical change of society.
?
Greg (16:54:07) :
I just read a small piece in this weeks San Diego Union Tribune – from the AP. It had a headline: “North Pole explorers forced to end mission”.
The reason listed in the article for their abandonment of the mission, according to the “team”, was “because of an early summer ice melt”.
How can they continue to lie so blatantly???
I suggest you check out the following:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
It doesn’t look too good along their projected route.
For all Alarmists like tomm174: You would be very surprised if you took the time to read what is posted here to find out that a large percentage of people that comment are actually scientists or engineers. I’ll post my credentials: I’m a registered professional engineer with 29 years of experience in earth science.
I have only one strange belief and that is the world is actually flat. Just kidding.
OT: A digression that fits a little due to the nature of how the scientific debate is conducted. This article at the London Telegraph is somewhat disturbing and interestingly draws attention to the peer review process.
The scientific fraudster who dazzled the world of physics
Jan Hendrik Schon produced a string of fake discoveries. So why were his fellow scientists so slow to work out what was going on, asks Eugenie Samuel Reich.
By Eugenie Samuel Reich
Published: 8:23PM BST 18 May 2009
Jan Hendrik Schon: The scientific fraudster who dazzled the world of physics
Schön’s fraud was the largest ever exposed in physics Photo: AP
In the spring of 2002, Jan Hendrik Schön was perhaps the most promising young scientist on the planet. The 32-year-old researcher at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey claimed to have created electronic circuits with transistors – the tiny switches inside – made not of silicon but of materials that were closer to plastic. He had made innovative superconductors, objects with a seemingly magical ability to conduct electricity without wasting any of it; he had come up with the first organic laser, the first light-emitting transistor, and had delved into the world of nanotechnology to produce a transistor based on a single molecule. There was just one problem: many of his discoveries, which dazzled the scientific world, were complete fabrications.
Schön’s fraud was the largest ever exposed in physics; he ended up without a job, and was forced to leave America in disgrace. But the ease with which his fraudulent findings and grotesque errors were accepted by his peers raises troubling questions about the way in which scientists assess each other’s work, and whether there might be other such cases out there.
Re. the last sentence, I suspect that a few hereabouts could add to such a list.
More at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/5345963/The-scientific-fraudster-who-dazzled-the-world-of-physics.html
Funny thing, Phil, based upon the graphic you link to. The concentration of ice along the projected path was for ice concentration of no lower than 80%, with near by areas of between 90 to 100%. Doesn’t sound like a lot of melted ice to me, considering NSIDC considers greater than 15% enough to classify an area as positive with regard to ice extent and area.
It doesn’t look too good along their projected route.
Here’s a satellite image of the area from yesterday, check out all the leads about halfway down.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009138/crefl1_143.A2009138223500-2009138224000.1km.jpg
Phil, if you are suggesting that SPRING thaw wasn’t taken into account, and they were “surprised by melting ice” IN THE SPRING, I have to firmly disagree. This was clearly staged for the enhancement of an agenda. How could it be otherwise?
Actually, Phil, I think this satellite image is closer to the final location where Catlin was picked up. Stay in the top left corner for the most part. This, of course, is based upon the location graphic NASA provides on the left. The Catlin team was not just off the coast of Greenland, which is the location your image shows. This is closer to the 120 meridian.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009139/crefl1_143.A2009139015500-2009139020000.1km.jpg
An interesting observation at http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/007390.html
Barry Foster (01:05:00)
Shukman is poor. A few years back he cost the BBC a great deal of money by reporting a fraudulent mining story in Africa. They then put him on climate change stories, but it still seems like he has a penchant for ‘frauds’:-)
Keith (12:46:46) :
Actually, Phil, I think this satellite image is closer to the final location where Catlin was picked up. Stay in the top left corner for the most part. This, of course, is based upon the location graphic NASA provides on the left. The Catlin team was not just off the coast of Greenland, which is the location your image shows. This is closer to the 120 meridian.
Yeah, the leads show up all over the area which is consistent with the AMSR-E images.
David Ball (10:55:50) :
Phil, if you are suggesting that SPRING thaw wasn’t taken into account, and they were “surprised by melting ice” IN THE SPRING, I have to firmly disagree.
If you’re suggesting that the number and extent of the leads in that vicinity which I and Keith are referring to are predictable spring behavior in that part of the Arctic then I have to disagree with you. The normal spring melt is from the outside-in, notably Bering, Baffin and Greenland seas at this time of year. The AMSR-E and sat images seem to suggest a lot of stressed, thin ice in the vicinity of the pole, probably related to the strong drift in that area this spring.
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Drift-1.jpg
Phil said; If you’re suggesting that the number and extent of the leads in that vicinity which I and Keith are referring to are predictable spring behavior in that part of the Arctic then I have to disagree with you. The normal spring melt is from the outside-in, notably Bering, Baffin and Greenland seas at this time of year. The AMSR-E and sat images seem to suggest a lot of stressed, thin ice in the vicinity of the pole, probably related to the strong drift in that area this spring. Come on , Phil, you are distracting from the point. The point is the Caitlin people are trying to suggest that the melt, which is later than usual, is the result of global warming. You said in this post that it is “probably related to strong drift in that area”. Which is it? Nice try at redirecting though, ….
ctmakajinhoh:
Reply: Could you please not say things like that? It really is pushing it. ~
jeez has a better sense of humor than charles… but rebuke acknowledged. Eugenics is NO laughing matter.
Reply: Different roles, sorry, but…I…can…be…funny…you mean meany. ~ ctmakajinhoh
tomm174:
“…You guys juggle with words, graphs, lie about what scientists say. – Why ?? You can’t bear someone else to be right ? You want your grandchildren to suffer ?”
actually, the response to you has been pretty much based on uninterpreted, empirical fact, founded on raw data.
as to your last point (though, unfortunately, it seems you may have already beat a hasty, silent retreat), our unborn grand-children, great-grand-children and……. were they to learn in advance of of the crushing debt burden already facing them, might well opt not to come forth into this world in the first place, if they could so choose.
debt slavery in a potential ice age.
enticing, no?
Didn’t the pilots say that anyone who waited beyond April 30th for pickup was flirting with death and even putting the pilots at risk? They waited well beyond April 30th and apparently had no problem with the pickup. So who is telling the truth? It seems that the slow melt allowed greater time on the ice.
Mike Bryant (18:49:08) :
Didn’t the pilots say that anyone who waited beyond April 30th for pickup was flirting with death and even putting the pilots at risk?
This comment was made in 2003 about a completely separate polar expedition of haddow
They waited well beyond April 30th and apparently had no problem with the pickup. So who is telling the truth? It seems that the slow melt allowed greater time on the ice.
The group were presumably listening to the advice of the pilots. If they said dangerous to pick if not now; catlin accept and get picked up. Isn’t this what every one on this blog hoped for – no danger to the pilots?
Catlin is a better representation of Arctic ice extent than Wegner in the same way the surface station temperature measurements are better than MSU measurements for measuring atmospheric temperature changes.
New (to me) info on the The IARC-JAXA Information System (IJIS) site
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Included is an explanation of the june glitch.
While there you can also control thier camera accessed from this page:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/webcam.htm
Method for calculating sea-ice extent
The sea-ice extent is calculated as the areal sum of sea ice covering the ocean where sea-ice concentration (SIC) exceeds 15%. SIC data of JAXA’s AMSR-E standard products are used for this purpose (http://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/AMSR/products/pdf/alg_des.pdf). The algorithm for calculating SIC was developed and provided by Dr. Comiso of NASA GSFC through a cooperative relationship between NASA and JAXA.
The black dot seen at the North Pole is an area lacking data where AMSR-E cannot observe the Earth’s surface due to the limit of its observational coverage (i.e., orbit inclination of 98deg. and swath width of 1600km). Please note that this area is also counted as sea-ice cover in our estimation of sea-ice extent. We may change the policy (i.e., filling the gap with full coverage of sea ice) in the near future due to the recent drastic reduction of Arctic sea ice. We will announce this if it is implemented.
The current version of data processing produces an erroneous blip of sea-ice extent on June 1 and October 15, which is seen in the graph of sea-ice extent as a small peak on these dates. The apparent blip arises due to switching of some parameters in the processing on those dates. The parameter switching is needed because the surface of the Arctic sea ice becomes wet in summer due to the melting of ice, drastically changing the satellite-observed signatures of sea ice. We will soon improve the processing to make the graph much smoother.
In principle, SIC data could have errors of 10% at most, particularly for the area of thin sea ice seen around the edge of sea-ice cover and melted sea ice seen in summer. Also, SIC along coastal lines could also have errors due to sub-pixel contamination of land cover in an instantaneous field of view of AMSR-E data.
Averaging period and the update timing of daily data
In general, sea-ice extent is defined as a temporal average of several days (e.g., five days) in order to eliminate calculation errors due to a lack of data (e.g., for traditional microwave sensors such as SMMR and SSM/I). However, we adopt the average of two days to achieve rapid data release. The wider spatial coverage of AMSR-E enables reducing the data-production period.
Usually the latest value of daily sea-ice extent is fixed and updated at around 1 p.m. (4 a.m.) JST (UT). Before the value is fixed, we also assign a preliminary value of daily sea-ice extent several times (usually three to four times) as an early report, which is determined without the full two-day observation coverage. (The fixed values of sea-ice extent are determined with the full coverage of observation data.)
Definition of sea-ice cover (extent and area)
The area of sea-ice cover is often defined in two ways, i.e., sea-ice “extent” and sea-ice “area.” These multiple definitions of sea-ice cover may sometimes confuse data users. The former is defined as the areal sum of sea ice covering the ocean (sea ice + open ocean), whereas the latter “area” definition counts only sea ice covering a fraction of the ocean (sea ice only). Thus, the sea-ice extent is always larger than the sea-ice area. Because of the possible errors in SIC mentioned above, satellite-derived sea-ice concentration can be underestimated, particularly in summer. In such a case, the sea-ice area is more susceptible to errors than the sea-ice extent. Thus, we adopt the definition of sea-ice extent to monitor the variation of the Arctic sea ice on this site.
Bill, is that you Flan-again?
Not sure where to place this comment…
Hmmm is the sea ice at the central east coast of Greenland there:
http://saf.met.no/p/ice/nh/conc/conc.shtml
or not?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
Looks like we have satellite problems again. There are also other missing swaths…
Mike
Mike Bryant (15:26:21) :
Not sure where to place this comment…
Hmmm is the sea ice at the central east coast of Greenland there:
http://saf.met.no/p/ice/nh/conc/conc.shtml
or not?
It’s there but rather fragmented:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2009141/crefl1_143.A2009141212500-2009141213000.1km.jpg
Phil.
I wonder if the satellite problems are affecting the extent curve.
Mike
AWI EM bird research plan details
http://www.espo.nasa.gov/oib/docs/PANARCMIP-V2-20090219.pdf
Mike Bryant (17:11:43) :
Phil.
I wonder if the satellite problems are affecting the extent curve.
Missing swathes aren’t going to cause any problems, they show up ~everyday on AMSR-E. The problem that occurred with the SSMI imager was rather different.
David Ball (15:48:47) :
Come on , Phil, you are distracting from the point. The point is the Caitlin people are trying to suggest that the melt, which is later than usual, is the result of global warming. You said in this post that it is “probably related to strong drift in that area”. Which is it? Nice try at redirecting though, ….
Actually what they said was that “floating sea ice now starting to break up around Ward Hunt Island, it is only a matter of time before the summer melt begins further out into the ocean, including around the Ice Team’s location”.
” It will be the pilots’ decision as to when exactly the team will be extracted.” The reason for extraction would be the state of the ice in the vicinity of the on ice team, which is exactly what Keith and I were discussing, your misdirecting to the state of the ice at the periphery of the ice pack is an irrelevancy.
In Case You Missed this bit of heresy –
Going By Car To The North Pole
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/in-case-you-missed-it-going-by-car-to-the-north-pole/
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=44335&cid=219&p=27.04.2009
Russian motorists drive to North Pole
Catlin should have called the Russkies for a rescue.