NSIDC pulls the plug on Arctic Sea Ice Graphs

Hi, one Oxford University professor who designs satellites – his last blew up on the launch pad, a replacement should be launched this year – specifically to measure ice at the poles and sea temperature said in a recent interview that all satellite measurements should be taken with a pinch of salt because all are too remote from what they are supposed to be measuring.
Me thinks that we are all being led up the garden path by having too much data that most likely doesnt really matter one way or the other, the planet will plod on with or without us.
It so happens that according to the latest report by the British Antarctica Survey that Antarctica has been growing sea ice at the rate of 100,000 sqkms since 1970 and one bright spark has commented that whilst this maybe true we need to be aware that the southern ocean temperature has been rising faster than mose at 0.17c a decade or 100 years or whatever and gives a detailed account of why this is happening, my response is so what?
According to God (Al Gore) the scare is that when sea levels rise because the ice caps melt we are all going to drown, well if warming causes the ice caps to grow in size then clearly AGW means we wont drown so what is all the fuss about?
Extract from article based on the premise better do something that nothing”The problem is that the solutions being offered don’t provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. That’s basically the equivalent of building 1,000 new nuclear power plants all operating by 2020. Now I’m all in favor of nuclear energy, but that would affect the global temperature by only seven-hundredths of a degree by 2050 and fifteen hundredths by 2100.” We wouldnt even notice it!!
So basically we can spend as many billions as you like and it wont make any flippin difference so why not sit back take a few beers and what AGW cause the ice caps to grow just to spite Al Gore.
What causes me most concern is the fact than when Al Gore pretended to be a politician no one took him seriously so how can it be that when he pretends to be a scientist they do?
David Wells

Alan the Brit (01:50:41) :
Question, if this instrument is coming to the end of its working life, which they must have known about without doubt, with all that money & brainpower, didn’t somebody suggest planning a new instrument on a new satellite ready to take over if so when they launched the former, so that a relatively smooth changeover could be effected?
That’s why certain organizations like using SSMI, because it’s launched on a series of satellites with overlap for consistency checking. When F13 started to deteriorate they switched to F15 unfortunately that developed a problem so they had to switch back to F13 while trying to get F17 on-stream and calibrated.
“As of 02 June 2008, NSIDC has switched its SSM/I processing stream from the DMSP-F13 satellite to the DMSP-F15 satellite. This is due to a failing recorder on F13 which has been operational since 1995 and is expected to be decommissioned in the near future. For data continuity, F15 data has been acquired back to 01 January 2008. F13 products since 01 January 2008 remain and will continue to be produced until data quality degrades to an unusable level or the satellite is out of service.”
“On 16 February 2009, NSIDC noticed significant problems with the NRT brightness temperature product. Upon investigation, the problem was found to be due to an issue with the DMSP F15 SSM/I 22 GHz frequency brightness temperature fields. The problem began around 1 January 2009 and gradually worsened until it became noticeable in the sea ice product (NRT DMSP SSM/I Daily Polar Gridded Sea Ice Concentrations). NSIDC is working to correct the issue and provide reliable NRT brightness temperature data. In the meantime, F15 data since 1 January 2009 should not be used.”
” NSIDC has been working on a transition to a newer sensor on the F17 satellite for several months. At this time, we have more than a year of data from F17, which we are using to intercalibrate with F13 data. The F17 data are not yet available for near-real-time updates. We will resume posting daily updates as soon as possible, either from F13, if the present problem is resolved, or from F17, when the transition is complete.”
If there has been a failure in the data collection because of a fault, or other in service issue, how do we/they know that a) it’s been giving correct data from the start, b) when it started going wrong, or was it because the data wasn’t what was wanted/expected? c) does this place a question mark over the accuracy of the previous data already published? d) how accurate & reliable are the other data sources if ice extent/area, etc? e) does this mean that Arctic sea-ice cannot be reliably measured in the meantime, posing questions about any claims made for either ice increase or decrease ready for the Copenhagen agenda? I am well aware as are most here that all institutions have their professional & personal pride & wouldn’t want to concede that their methods of measurement are suspect compared to others.
Cross checking between the different satellites (with different sensor designs as well) allows problems to be spotted, also real-time products are more susceptible whereas corrections for missing swathes can be corrected after the next path when working off-line.