A misidentified image of “Arctic Icebergs” used by the United Nations Environment Program. (Source: Shutterstock)
Things get stranger and stranger with the United Nations’ climate change science compendium published two weeks back.
First, it was learned that the graph indicating temperature for the past 1,000 years had been taken from Wikipedia, where it had been deposited by a non-climatologist. Now, it comes to light that the report features a photograph purporting to show Arctic icebergs melting, when the actual image is of Antarctica.
As I looked through the updated report yesterday, in which the Wikipedia graph has been removed, I noticed that an image looked to have been misidentified. Fortunately for me, the UN had purchased the image on Shutterstock.com, where about an hour’s worth of sleuthing revealed that indeed this was not a picture from the top of the world, but rather from the bottom.
Some will say that it doesn’t matter. I think it does. The United Nations claims to be the steward of the best science on the planet. Wouldn’t one hope that it would have staff capable of differentiating between Antarctica and the Arctic? Of course, global warming alarmists, including those employed at the United Nations, have been using both polar ice caps’ supposed melt as evidence of runaway global warming for years now. Meanwhile, though, Antarctic sea ice has continued to increase in extent throughout the satellite era, and temperatures at the South Pole have slowly fallen.
Nonetheless, the fear-mongers in the media and at the United Nations strive to frighten the credulous into believing that Earth’s southernmost continent is on the verge of catastrophic melt. As for the Arctic misrepresented by the UN’s photograph, how many of the report’s editors even know that sea ice increased in 2009 in the Arctic for the second year in a row? At the United Nations Environment Program, the answer is evidently: none. A map with a list of “climate anomalies” from the last year indicates that 2009 was the second most significant melt in the Arctic. In fact, it was the third lowest melt and may very well represent a turnaround. Only time will tell. Even The New York Times has an article today addressing the seeming good news.
As for that list of “Significant Climate Anomalies from 2008/2009,” the great majority of items listed are weather, rather than climate. An example: the four passages of Tropical Storm Fay across Florida’s coastline. While interesting, Fay’s behavior does not have an apparent, or hidden, relationship to rising co2 levels according to any reputable scientist, nor does it cloak 2008’s quiet Atlantic tropical cyclone season. (For those keeping track at home, 2009’s has been quieter still.)
The recovery from 2007’s record sea extent minimum in the Arctic has continued for a second straight year. Only time will tell whether it marks the beginning of a meaningful, long-term recovery.
Another error in the UN report should give any follower of climatology pause: the Mauna Loa co2 record is shown as “Keeling 2009.” While the graph is rightly referred to by climate professionals as the Keeling Curve, Dr. Keeling has been unable to author any new articles of late, as he passed away in 2005. (Like the other misattributed graph in the report, this one has tell-tale signs that it was simply pulled from Wikipedia.)
The last mistake in the UN report that I will delve into today features a photo of the Hawaiian Islands with a menacing caption about sea levels – trouble in paradise! Here is the text from the caption: “In Hawaii, as the ocean continues to rise, flooding occurs in low-lying regions during rains because storm sewers back up with saltwater and coastal erosion accelerates on beaches. Source: L. Carey.”
There are a few problems here. One: “L. Carey” does not exist, at least not according to the author of the caption. That would be Chip Fletcher, director of the Coastal Geography Group at the University of Hawaii. Reached for comment, Fletcher said that he was flattered that the United Nations report had found his statement in an internal department newsletter to be useful. Two: Fletcher also acknowledged that all of the flooding described by his statement takes place in areas of landfill that are subsiding.
Did Fletcher think that it might be a good thing for the United Nations to note the landfill subsidence when using a single image, and a single statement, to convey the reality of “climate change” in the islands? “Listen, the world is a big place,” Fletcher said. “I have other things to worry about than that.” Were there other locations in the islands that saw such flooding? “Parts of Waikiki have,” Fletcher said. Aren’t those parts of Waikiki also landfill, though? “Actually, they are.”
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Couldn’t get past a master’s degree supervisory committee.
Ben Hoffman (19:56:14) :
Could be they made the mistakes you claim, but that doesn’t de-legitimize the science. It just makes the U.N. look bad.
The fact that antarctic sea ice has been increasing over a 30 year period, and that arctic sea ice has increased over the last two years, doesn’t delegitimise “science” that claims the Earth’s sea ice is rapidly melting?
Finding that the areas in Hawaii that are having lowland flooding problems are due to landfill subsistence, rather than sea level rise doesn’t deligitimise “science” that claims the opposite?
I have always wondered why the AGW movement tries to get away with obvious lies, now I realise that it’s because some folks are are so much easier to lie to.
It is an obvious fact that the IPCC and its affiliates consider themselves omnipotent.
How could anyone in their right mind deny this?
Speaking of polar bears and penguins, someone posted this in May, too good to not post again: http://i34.tinypic.com/2qk8e38.jpg
Steve, I clicked on your penguin/polar bear link as I just happened to be listening to Beethoven’s 9th. The Plar bear in back must have been listening to the same thing, as his head was nodding in synch.
Would it not be useful if this publication was countered with a publication constructed on the same lines with similar photos and diagrams, but with the true facts told? If the publication was endorsed only by respected climate scientists, meteorologists, statisticians and others working in the field, and just stuck to the objective and quantifiable facts and had no suggestion of connections to interested parties, it should carry some weight if it were then to be distributed to the policymakers at Copenhagen, with a message not to take precipitate action. If national representatives then ignored the advice, posterity will have a tail to tell.
If you need a fighting fund, I would be prepared to start things rolling with my little contribution. You have my email address.
Colin Porter
p.s. I am sure that my big brother David will also be happy to contribute.
Icebergs melt? Who knew? I’m glad that the UN told the world about it, I could never imagine that fresh water ice would melt in salt water! I thought all icebergs just floated around forever.
I recall watching a time lapse video of glaciers calving at Denver International Airport. The video was saying how this showed global warming. I wanted to turn to someone and ask: “I wonder what a healthy glacier looks like?”. Answer: It looks the same dummy! Healthy glaciers calve too.
How good is the United Nations at reforming itself?
Thursday, October 08, 2009
By George Russell
Not good at all, according to a lengthy study this year by U.N. investigators of a grandiose, five-year effort to streamline and coordinate the performance of a $778 million U.N. bureaucracy that is supposed to do what diplomats like to do best: hold meetings.
According to the report, the bureaucracy’s reform effort so far has been a near-total failure.
Yes, as is evidenced by lackadaisical UN climate reports.
This map addresses the confusion between the arctic and the antarctic regions (as well as other things). http://allamericasbest.com/photo_worldaccordingtoamericans.htm
Perhaps the UN could benefit from this valuable piece of American intelligence?
L. Carey? Who? “Who are you?”
I followed the link to Chip Fletcher’s newsletter – he is also quite an alarmist: quoting IPCC etc and stating “a sea level of approximately 1 m above present could be reached by the end of the 21st century”
He obviously hasn’t examined Hawaii’s actual sea level data:
The rate over the last 80 years is about 1.2 mm/decade and the rate has not changed.
Previous post image link di not show: Honolulu sea level
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Hawaii_files/image020.jpg
Should have said 1.2 mm/ year, not 1.2 mm/ decade. That is still one-tenth of what Fletcher alarms.
There is an L. Carey who has posted climate information in some magazine comments. I suspect he posted a link to Fletcher’s article in a temporary location, such as a newspaper comment, so we now can’t find the IPCC’s source.
If it’s already been explained, could somebody please tell me how it was noticed that this photo is the antarctic, not the arctic? For a tyro, it’s not obvious.
Thanks
Here is the web link for the Keeling et al. (2009) reference that is cited in the UNEP Climate Change Science Compendium (Figure 1.2):
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.html
Aw, heck, come on, Anthony. Its melting, isn’t it? You people just will never give up pointing out irrelevant facts, will you?
lichanos (16:19:18) – He says that it looked misidentified, and he was able to find it in a stock photo site. As for why it looked suspicious, to me it looks like ice flowing off of land (see the rounded shapes in the background) more than sea ice. Antarctica is known for its land ice, and usually that’s what is photographed there. In the Arctic sea ice, it begins as flat thin ice and develops ridged areas. The Arctic sea ice might have rounded shapes if is managed to get a lot of snow, but that is much less likely than that the photo is from Antarctica. There is land ice in the Arctic area, but that also doesn’t get photographed as often as the sea ice. So it just seems more likely for that image to be from Antarctica.
The phrasing indicates that about an hour of searching was done in one stock photo site. I’m not bothering to check, but I think the report credited that site’s photos. So once he was suspicious of the image, he tried searching in that site for a matching image.
Did I see a polar bear eating a penguin in the background?