Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I don’t know what to make of this one. I was wandering the web when I came across a Reuters article about a scientific study called “Global Floating Ice In “Constant Retreat”: Study“.
The Reuters article opens with this arresting text (emphasis mine):
LONDON
Wed Apr 28, 2010 1:38pm EDT
(Reuters) – The world’s floating ice is in “constant retreat,” showing an instability which will increase global sea levels, according to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters on Wednesday.
Floating ice had disappeared at a steady rate over the past 10 years, according to the first measurement of its kind.
“Hello,” sez I, “how can the sea ice be in constant retreat?” I knew from my previous research that the global ice was not in any kind of retreat at all.
I was also suspicious because of the next part of the quote:
“It’s a large number,” said Professor Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds, lead author of the paper, estimating the net loss of floating sea ice and ice shelves in the last decade at 7,420 cubic kilometers.
I went out to find a graphic to explain how that kind of huge ice loss might have happened, and the best explanation I could find was this one:
Figure 1. Oooops. How the floating ice shelves cracked off and lost 7,420 cubic kilometres.
Next, I went off to find the actual paper, and discovered a curious thing.
So what did I discover … and why is their quote suspicious?
Let me start with why their quote is suspicious. It is their claim that the earth has lost 7,420 cubic kilometres of ice. As I have mentioned elsewhere, when I see numbers I automatically do an “order of magnitude” calculation in my head to see if they are reasonable or not.
I knew from my previous research that there is about twenty million square kilometres (km^2) of floating ice on the planet. I also knew that much of it out towards the edges is only a metre or two thick.
So if the ice averaged say 1.5 metres thick out at the edges where the loss happens, a seven thousand cubic kilometer loss would mean a total loss of ice area of about five million km^2, or a quarter of the area of the world’s floating ice. I think someone would have noticed that before now …
Of course, that made me wonder if the problem was in the study, or in the Reuters quote. However, that same number (7,420 cubic kilometres lost) appeared in no less than 81 other online publications. So I went haring off to find the article.
One of publications reporting the story, NewScientist, 5 May, 2010, gave the “doi:” for the article. The DOI is the “Digital Object Identifier”, and it should link directly to the article, which was supposed to have been published by Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) on Wednesday, April 28th … but the curious thing I discovered was that the DOI didn’t work.
Someone had commented on that, saying “The DOI doesn’t work.” This was replied to by someone called Marshall, from newscientist.com, who said:
Hi Eric, it’s because the article hasn’t been published on GRL’s website yet. The DOI is taken directly from our press copy of the paper, so once the article is published it should work.
OK, fair enough … although the original Reuters article was allegedly published on April 28, and today is May 28, and the DOI still isn’t working. So I went to the GRL web site to see what I could find.
I first did a search for any articles by “Shepherd” in “GRL” for “2010”, and I got this:
Figure 2. Ooooops …
Thinking it might have been misfiled, I searched through all of the May articles for anything by Shepherd. Nil. I looked through the May articles for anything regarding “ice”. Nada. I repeated both searches for April. Once again, zip. Niente. Nothing.
I thought “Well, maybe it appeared in another journal”. So I took a look on Google, but I found nothing. Google did find 32,500 instances of “ice in constant retreat”, of which 7,550 also contained “GRL”.
Google also revealed that the report of the study has been picked up by ABC News, NewsDaily, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Arab News, and ScienceDaily. It was featured on Joe Romm’s global warming blog “ClimateProgress”. It has been referred to in blogs and news reports from India, Australia, Russia, and China. It shows up on TweetMeme, Huffington Post, and Facebook. Even Scientific American has an article on it.
So at this point, it has gone round and round the world. It has been illustrated with all kinds of pictures of melting ice, and of global ice extent, and (inevitably) of polar bears. It has been discussed and debated and dissected around the web.
And with all of that publicity, with all those news reports, with all that discussion and debate … as near as I can determine, despite Reuters saying it was published a month ago, the study has never been published anywhere.
Not only that, but nobody seems to have noticed that the study has never been published.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Scientific American must have noticed, because they quietly removed the page where they had published the report … but it is still in Google’s cache.
One last thing. In all of that, in the frenzy to get out tomorrow’s news today, in the rush to report the latest scientific rumour, people seem to have forgotten to ask … how is the global sea ice actually doing?
Glad you asked. Here’s today’s information, from Cryosphere Today:
Figure 3. Daily global sea ice anomaly (red line) compared to 1979-2008 average. Link contains full sized image.
As you can see, as of today, the global sea ice is exactly on the line representing the 1979-2008 average. So over the last ten years, instead of a loss of 7,420 cubic kilometres, the loss has been … somewhere around zero. Go figure.
You know, when I was a kid I liked stories with morals, you know, like “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, that kind of thing.
But what is the moral of this story?
Perhaps the moral is what my Grandma said, which was, “Kids, you can believe half of what you read, a quarter of what you hear … and an eighth of what you say.”
Of course, Grandma didn’t live to see the Internet. If she had, the percentage for believing what you read would have been much, much lower.
Oh, yeah, one final note … did I mention how much I dislike the current practice of “science by press release”? I suppose you gotta do it, it’ a competitive world, but my goodness …
So I guess the moral of this story is, “Never laugh at a climate science press release … you’ll have plenty of opportunity when (and if) the study is published.”
w.
But….The Arctic is melting!
The Arctic ¡s Melting says scientist in Los Angeles (AP)
A mysterious warming of the Arctic climate is slowly manifesting itself, said Dr Haas Ahlmann, Swedish geophysicist at the University of California yesterday.
If the Antarctic ice regions and the major Greenland icecap should reduce at the rate of the present melting, he said, the oceanic surfaces would rise to catastrophic proportions. People living in the lowlands along the shores would be inundated. Temperatures in the Arctic had increased 10 deg fahrenheit since 1900, an “enormous” rise from the scientific standpoint. The level of waters in Spitsbergen area in the same period had risen 1 to 1.5 millimeters a year.
The Argus Saturday 31 May 1947: http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/22429983
>>> ” in defiance of most scientific opinion, “.
Notice that word: “most”.
…-
“Nunavut: Polar bear population is healthy
By The Canadian Press
Sat. May 29 – 4:54 AM
IQALUIT, Nunavut — Ottawa should downgrade the protection status that polar bears receive under federal legislation, the Nunavut government said Friday.
In a reversal of its previous position, and in defiance of most scientific opinion, territorial environment minister Daniel Shewchuk said bear populations are healthy and should no longer come under the Species At Risk Act.
“We do not think bears should be listed,” said Shewchuk.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1184700.html
gilbert says:
May 28, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Phil. says:
May 28, 2010 at 7:55 pm
“The loss of thickness over the whole Arctic is ~0.6m over the last 5 years (Sea Ice Cover, D. Perovich, R. Kwok, W. Meier, S. Nghiem, J. Richter-Menge). In the summer that would be 1,800 m^3 and in winter 9,000 m^3 which seems to match the figure Willis read. So the value looks right!”
Willis discusses a paper that doesn’t yet exist, which appears to discuss global sea ice in cubic kilometers. You respond with a different paper discussing arctic ice in cubic meters. It seems to me if you’re going to go trolling, you need to get some part of your response right.
Yes you’re right I mistyped it should have been km^3, the problem of having no preview. However posting a response isn’t trolling and you could do with being less snarky.
I am constantly reminded of George Orwell.
“Choco rations have been increased to 25 grams per week, up from 30 grams per week.” (1984) Orwell?
An ilustration how the northern cryosphere looked 20 years ago and how it is looking now:
http://xmarinx.sweb.cz//19902010.PNG
Source: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/
Does somebody see a “retreat”?
We really haven’t come very far in the past 4 million years, have we?
Phil. says:
May 29, 2010 at 5:45 am
That is the closest we will ever see from Phil saying: “I was wrong.”
John K Sutherland,
Great Orwell quote! Thanks.
Sounds like the press released happened after submission and acceptance for publication and before the article was peer reviewed.
It may be that the errors and inconsistencies highlighted here have been raised with the author(s) and correction or clarification sought, which might explain the publication delay.
It is easy to get blind to your own assumptions and, when working with a like minded group, easy to omit the process of having your work scrutinised and critiqued.
Its said that Mother-in-laws or teenaged offspring are best placed to present you with a real -life view of yourself!
The only solution to this madness is to ground every airplane, garrage every car and truck, sink every ship and tugboat, build cariages and wagons and go back to horses. Oh yeah, and close down all the medical schools, Wall Street, NASA, NOAA, NAS, etc., etc.. AND The WEB, and television, and telephones, and … (the Post Office can be very efficient if they don’t have any competition and mailmen have to walk from house to house)… and Unions, NO MORE UNIONS, except for coal mines- coal miners need unions… oh there’s just so much to do, this is going to take a while.
The world is simply too small and crowded.
I hope, Willis, that in the spirit of proper publication, you are going to send your argument, further up this thread, to the journal as a “letter to the editor” or however they deal with these things. Publish – make it official!
Phil. says:
May 28, 2010 at 7:55 pm
“The loss of thickness over the whole Arctic is ~0.6m over the last 5 years (Sea Ice Cover, D. Perovich, R. Kwok, W. Meier, S. Nghiem, J. Richter-Menge). In the summer that would be 1,800 m^3 and in winter 9,000 m^3 which seems to match the figure Willis read. So the value looks right!”
The paper may be waiting for some photoshopped Poley Bear pictures. Since the number fudging is robust, they need to roll out these stout claims in the summer time. More dramatic impact.
“The period of study, curiously, was 1994-2004”
So to summarise other comments here, a study based on time frame and geography that just happens, more than any other, to support the hypothesis (did someone mention cherry-picking?) Cherry-picked observations then combined with assumption-laden computer models to deliberately blur the boundary between speculation and reality, increasing the criticism albedo. In any case, results showing a rise in sea level barely sufficient to drown an ant presented as significant to a scientifically illiterate and lazy media desperate to blow them out of proportion in order to support the ‘narrative’.
Something tells me that when you have to resort to these kind of measures to support your hypothesis, you might want to take another look at the hypothesis.
They’re saying: “If all the world’s floating ice melted it would add about 4 centimeters to sea levels.” However, I understand floating ice displaces the same volume as it does when it melts, so whence the sea level increase?
I found it curious that the Reuters article (unlike all of the other ones that I looked at and which included a number of AGW topics) did not have a “comment” tab.
“This study was funded by the UK National Centre for Earth Observation and the Philip Leverhulme Trust.”
Further delving reveals in turn that the UKNCEO is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council – yet another Quango funded from my taxes , encouraging persons in second rate “universities ” to exercise their limited intelligence researching non problems.
David Cameron has plenty of scope to cut out wasteful expenditure here.
Veronica says:
May 29, 2010 at 6:14 am
I hope, Willis, that in the spirit of proper publication, you are going to send your argument, further up this thread, to the journal as a “letter to the editor” or however they deal with these things. Publish – make it official!
========
But the paper Willis has addressed hasn’t been published, so there is no guarantee the version he reviewed will be the same as the published version, assuming it ever will be published.
I don’t know the status of the paper, but if author Shepherd is in the process of revising it for publication, he might be interested in what Willis has found.
His e-mail address is:
http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.shepherd
Evidently there won´t be any lack of “toilet papers”in the near future, at least while there is a great need of them, before next Cancun´s triple X climate change scammers tropical jamboree.
Somebody correct me if I am wrong but surely a fair percentage of the “ice loss”calculated by these so called “scientists” is frozen sea water, when this thaws it has no effect on sea level rise.
Surface-level sea water has a density of about 1.025 kg/liter, so 1kg of it will fit into a volume of about 976ml. A floating 1kg block of fresh-water ice will displace the same 976ml, but when it melts it will need a full 1000ml. If you do the ice-cube-in-a-glass experiment with salted (or sweetened) water, the water will spill over (a little) when the cube melts. This is just another example of a technically real effect being blown out of proportion, much like the catastrophic 0.007°C (per year) of warming we’ve had over the past 100 years or so. Ho hum.
/dr.bill
Willis, it was obvious,even before you sourced the paper, that the paper was discussing ALL floating ice ,not simply sea ice. Read the press release. Ice shelves have been going backwards in the Arctic and on the Antarctic Peninsula for a while now..and that is where the major volumes are found. As has been pointed out,pointing to a graph of extent and claiming it speaks for volume is not a good idea.
Phil, that would be the loss of “modeled” thickness, would it not? Or are you referring to areas of the Arctic that have lost 24/7 ice cover? Which I believe is the primary modeled basis of thickness: the measurement of multi-year ice based on ice cover pixel loss and gain. I find it intriguing that some scientists measure thickness by counting 24/7 ice cover pixel loss and gain, in a multi-dynamical fluid system, believing that the former, pixal loss and gain, is more important than the latter. And then go on to assume, imply, or directly state that such loss or gain in this fluid system is somehow significantly catastrophic and point to man-made (at least it isn’t mothers’ fault for once) causes. So it seems to me that I am the one that figures in many different factors while you are the one-note urban cowboy, if I may paraphrase your ad hom words.
However, I will elucidate my position so that you may avoid one-note assumptions of my thinking. When I refer to wind driven ice behavior, I am referring to the many different pressure systems (and their clouds) that come and go at both psuedo-random and oscillatory patterns. Working with or against that system are the psuedo-random and oscillatory patterns of Arctic ocean currents. And lastly, I have learned about and can factor in the two stable features: the topographical influence of land in the Arctic (instead of open ocean as in the Antarctic), and seasonal axial tilt causing solar ice-melting heating changes that are well established. So it seems to me that a proper description of my thinking would be along the lines of a right good danceable medley.
There seems to be many interesting ideas floating around regarding this topic and not enough facts. (you can make up ideas — facts, not so much)
———————
. . . the problem of having no preview . . . Phil @ur momisugly 5:45 A.M.
This sort of comment appears about once a week here.
Why not use a word processor to compose, then review and edit? That won’t solve all of a writer’s problems, especially the sort mentioned by Phil, but it does help.
Gneiss, your statement about the last three years showing more ice but that it is still consistent with a downward trend, should be sent by you to every statistician skilled in data analysis of psuedo-random AND oscillatory fluid systems. More than likely they will use it in their next seminar about statistical representation and interpretation do’s and don’ts.
Wren
May 29, 2010 at 7:01 am
..from the “School of Earth and Environment”?, is that science, poetry or what?
I think, up there in the first world, there are many in need of industrial amounts of Castor Oil…wow!
RockyRoad @6:27 A.M.
The Reuters article (link at the top of this page) has statements such as:
Floating ice adds very little to sea levels, because it does not add to the total weight of water already in the sea, but it does add a little because ice contains no salt and so dilutes the ocean as it melts, causing the sea to expand in volume.
As sea water freezes the salt is lost and the ice can become salt free. You can search the web regarding these processes and the consequences, some of which have been discussed on WUWT previously.