Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?
UPDATE: USGS has issued a statement, see below.
WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.
Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690 (Audio clip available)
Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.
…
“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”
It gets better.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.
RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.
Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.
Here’s the story on all the Southern hemisphere sea ice, which includes all Antarctic sea ice, from Cryosphere today:
Maybe Ms. Ferrigno will be embarrassed enough by her geographic ineptitude and will heed Gavin Schmidt’s advice and stop trying to “persuade the public“.
======================================
UPDATE:
Statement from USGS:
The comment by Jane in the NPR interview was an honest mistake. We are sorry for the delay in responding to your email, but Jane has been out of the office. Below is an apology and clarification statement that will be posted on the NPR site soon. Jane will be in the office later today, and if you have any questions, please let me or her know.
From Jane …
I want to apologize to NPR and the listening audience for my misstatement last Sunday, February 28. During the last 20 years, an area more than 20,000 sq. km. (comparable to the size of New Jersey) has broken off the ice shelves of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is the Antarctic Peninsula, the source of the ice loss, that I meant to say was larger than the state of Texas but smaller than the state of Alaska.
Thank you,
Jessica Robertson
Public Affairs Specialist
Office of Communications
U.S. Geological Survey
(703) 648-6624
It’s time to assess the overall size of the state of disarray of Climate Science.
This sounds like the thing Gavin was cautious about. Hyperbole, whether intentional or not, when trying to explain something to the public, is really bad PR.
Unfortunately, the general public with their dumbed down educations and the soundbite du jour will accept this misinformation as fact and,
they will even try to tell all of their friends.
We need to look for some way to force debate on the radio to let the incompetents we fund expose themselves.
Or we could just sue the bad apples for defamation of the truth?
Ms. FERRIGNO: “The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica.”
Huh? Would she like to try putting that in English, instead of Climatospeak? The ice shelves are changing how exactly? And which is it, “global change”, or “climate warming”?
RAZ: “I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?”
You got it, RAZ. With the CAGW cargo cultists it’s not about accuracy, or facts, it’s all about the “drama”. Looks like Ms. Ferrigno is the drama queen.
[snip – dialed back]
“Peter Miller”
“On another matter – does anyone know the answer to this?”
No – but I’ve also wondered how it is that Carbon Dioxide, and any other of the ‘much more powerful greenhouse gases’, are able to keep more heat in to the planet than they keep from coming in from outside the atmosphere. How is a gas sensitive to the direction of radiated heat? Or is the answer more to do with convection, conduction and notions of specific heat, say?
Folks, let’s cut her a little slack. She made these comment on Feb 28, and hadn’t yet seen Gavin’s comments of March 2 where he instructed all climate scientists everywhere that “Their job is not persuading the public.”
What’s even more appalling is that I’m sure she had time to prepare for this short segment on NPR, with a friendly host, so how could she get the story so wrong. If wasn’t like she was blind sided with some unplanned question.
Oh, I know, her scary story follows the consensus thinking so it must be right. And anyway, even if the numbers are wrong won’t we be doing the right thing for the planet? /sarc off.
Come on you Americans, get with it.
20,000 sq km is the size of
Wales !
You should know by now that Wales has become the standard unit for measuring area, be it icebergs or rainforests.
REPLY: Save the Wales
“The message has to be dramatic. If you say 20,000 km2, that means nothing. Especially to Americans. There are about 1.619 km per mile. If Ms. Ferrigno had said 12,427 square miles, the audience would know that Texas isn’t that big. But Americans don’t know square kilometers. So, in this case, obfuscation enabled Ms. Ferrigno to make a dramatic announcement.”
Except there are only ~7600 square miles in 20,000 square km…even more revealing.
You have to divide 20,000 by 1.612^2 (2.62).
Wow, Antartica is BIG! And we have how many weather stations on it?
I think it’s important to point out that this wasn’t some off-the-cuff gaffe, where Ferrigno said, “20 thousand square kilometers have been lost,” and then the interviewer followed up with, “Can you give us a sense of large an area that is?” She could be forgiven if she just panicked on air and said something stupid.
But from the transcript of the interview, this appears to be a prepared talking point. Hard to imagine that a geographer could be so utterly and completely clueless.
Alexander Feht (10:07:13) : “Face it, fellow US citizens, we are being ruled by the people who know only one thing: how to embezzle our money. Everything else is beyond their comprehension.”
Yes, but you have to admit Alexander that it is the one thing they are VERY good at.
According to my calculations 20,000 square km equals 7722 square miles.
To put that in perspective we are talking about 6 Big Bend National Parks (the little green spot):
http://www.pmansbach.com/BigBend/texas.gif
JP Miller (09:44:08) :
I imagine USGS is highly embarassed at this point.
Millions heard what she said.
Damage Control, report !
Paul Daniel Ash (09:34:45) :
A complete farrago of misinformation from Ms Ferringo?
No, she blew it on the comparison, but she was correct on the number. A New Jersey of ice is quite a lot…
——————-
Actually, to put into perspective (assuming she is correct) Antarctica lost a ‘New Jersey’ of ice in 20 years, since there are approx 590 ‘New Jerseys’ of ice in Antarctica it would take roughly 12,000 years to lose all of it. To me that says a ‘New Jersey’ of ice isn’t all that much.
The soft patter of NPR is very persuasive. Everyone I know that wants CO2 emissions cut and is concerned about Antarctica, polar bears, baby seals, etc. listens to NPR. They really cover stories that other organizations won’t touch. They also convey the Marin county lifestyle so well that I was surpised they live in D. C.
I think I may have cracked the Texas-sized code.
According to this Washington Post article from last year, the area of the Western Ice Shelf is comparable to the size of Texas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/13/AR2008011302753.html
So Ferrigno’s mistake was that she was basically claiming that the entire ice shelf had melted.
I feel much better now.
nc (10:24:27) :
“Real honest scientists had better start speaking up about all this climatic false hood or else the word scientist will be on equal footing as the word politician.”
They are already on equal footing with used car salesman, and dropping. However you are right, scientists need to recognize that trust is not a renewable resource. And time is growing short.
Well, this USGS scientist is persuading me rather well.
Was Ms. Ferrigno part of that NASA team that smashed the Mars probe into the planet because they got the units mixed up ?
Even the claim that the Antarctic has lost ice at all is misleading, and deliberately so, by our AGW promoting friends.
Ice may have been lost, but more was gained than lost, in the Antarctic region.
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉
Ms. FERRIGNO along with Al Gore got an A in science. I think they attended the same Class.
Well, while we are on about ice, perhaps things are changing a bit in the media. Today the Daily Telegraph (UK, hard copy) carried a story about a polar bear and its cub stranded on a tiny ice flow twelve miles from the nearest land…. And there wasn’t even a hint of a mention of AGW! It even had a BBC environmental presenter (Chris Packham) saying what good swimmers polar bears are and how they were probably quite safe!
I don’t think I dreamt it.
Everyone knows that Al Gore is not particularly intelligent or educated. The “million of degrees” Earth is far from an exception. Let’s admit it, he is an idiot. But there is a lot of sense in which Al Gore is equally intelligent and educated (or non-intelligent and uneducated) as the “scientists” he uses as the ultimate authority.
These people are third-class stuff, the people who barely got through schools and grad schools because they have never been good at anything. Because they happened to get somewhere where they don’t really belong, their current position is their greatest source of pride – they don’t have any valuable results – and they’re gonna do anything to keep this position.
Junk science. Junk scientists.