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.”
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LOL @ur momisugly 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.