Reposted from “Haunting the Library” (well worth a bookmark), another clueless journalist combined with an artist/activist makes The Guardian look pretty darned stupid. Five minutes or less of checking would have prevented this blunder.
Guardian Goes “Full Stupid” on Arctic Ice, Contradicts Itself.
The Guardian managed to outdo itself in it’s latest foray into global warming, claiming that Arctic sea ice has declined by three quarters in the last three decades. In a series of “factoids” following an interview with pop celebrity and latest Greenpeace spokesperson for the Arctic ice, Jarvis Cocker, Lucy Seigle, the Guardian’s environment reporter, informed readers that:
Of the Arctic sea ice, 75% has been lost over the past 30 years. Last year saw sea-ice levels plummet to the second-lowest since records began. It is estimated that the North Pole could be ice-free in the summer within the next 10-20 years.
However, the problem with this was not just it’s total departure from both reality and common sense, but the fact that an article in the Guardian only a couple of weeks beforehand had pointed out that this simply isn’t the case.
Quoting the Met Office’s Chief Scientist, Julia Sligo, the article noted that such claims were simply “not credible” –
She also said that suggestions the volume of sea ice had already declined by 75% already were not credible. “We know there is something [happening on the thinning of sea ice] but it’s not as dramatic as those numbers suggest.”
The problem, she explained, was that researchers did not know the thickness of Arctic sea ice with any confidence.
The Guardian. Met Office: Arctic Sea Ice Loss Linked to Drier, Colder UK Winters.
In fact, as the NSIDC points out, the extent of Arctic sea ice is very close to the average for the last three decades, not down by 75% as The Guardian’s environment reporter seems to be confused about:
Overview of Conditions
Arctic sea ice extent in April 2012 averaged 14.73 million square kilometers (5.69 million square miles). Because of the very slow rate of ice loss through the last half of March and the first three weeks of April, ice extent averaged for April ranked close to average out of 34 years of satellite data.
Someone should really help them out over at the Guardian’s environment section. Do you have an hour or two to spare, some basic common sense, plenty of paper and some crayons?
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Here’s the proof that Arctic Sea Ice has not declined 75% in 30 years, this graph of Arctic Sea Ice Extent from good buddy Dr. Peter Gleick using NSIDC data. Here is his original from his Huffington post article where he’s beating up Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Harrison Schmidt for comparing 1989 and 2009 20 year differences.
I’ve extended that graph of Gleick’s down to the zero line, and annotated the 1980 and 2010 year values and the 75% loss of 1980 value line (3.125) for reference. As you can see, there’s a loooonnnng way to go from 12.5 million square kilometers in 1980 to 3.125 million square kilometers in 2010 to make a 75% loss in 30 years.
The Guardian is only off by 7.675 million square kilometers…close enough for journo work I suppose.
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Sounds like a typical news day.
I think the argument is about sea ice volume rather than area/extent. Although as Julia Sligo states, the 75% claim isn’t credible for volume either.
As the satellite sent up to measure sea ice thickness doesn’t work apparently, estimates of changes to sea ice thickness/volume are little better than guesswork. But as we know, speculation in the absence of data passes as science in a large part of the CAGW camp.
REPLY: The original article http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jun/02/jarvis-cocker-arctic-oil-environment does not contain any discussion of ice volume. I double checked.
The bullet point:
■ Of the Arctic sea ice, 75% has been lost over the past 30 years. Last year saw sea-ice levels plummet to the second-lowest since records began. It is estimated that the North Pole could be ice-free in the summer within the next 10-20 years.
Doesn’t either. Only Slingo’s discussion does. And, I was addressing this:
-Anthony
You probably get a bigger number by comparing the extent at minimum, I guess.
What’s more important is what the most relevant metric is for that Armageddon of ‘rising sea levels’.
Clearly, to anyone with primary school physics at their fingertips, that is total global sea ice extent.
If you look at how that changes annually, you’ll see the fluctuations are rather smaller.
One thing people should get comfortable with is that newspapers are basically ‘factoid drug dealers’ serving up their addicts with a ‘daily fix’.
Our generation were brought up to believe newspapers formed a valuable societal role in education.
I now believe that they are comics. All of them. Playthings of rich proprietors. Tools of political influence and/or intimidation.
Thing is: if you want a newspaper to really inform and educate, enough people need to buy them/pick them up (for free ones) and enough advertisers need to buy into the message. Newspapers, after all, are ultimately advertising plays.
I only read them now to find out what the latest informational drug is. And to try and force journalists to tell some semblance of truth.
We have had 195 years of false reports of the Arctic melting…..
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817 ( Royal Society Archives)
And today it’s: “…the seas are rising much faster now thanks to global warming.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/01/north-carolina-sea-level-rises?intcmp=122
There must be some mistake, since:
“The Guardian has built this unrivalled team in the belief that environmental issues, and in particular global warming, is the defining issue of our age, combining politics, economics and social justice,” said James Randerson, editor of EnvironmentGuardian.co.uk, in a release from Guardian News & Media.”
http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/tag/lucy-siegle/
As part of the “Don’t destroy the Arctic” campaign Greenpace UK have a web form to tell Shell not to exploit the Artic. You can of course change both the subject and body of the email before sending….perhaps to let them know how much misinformation Greenpeace are pushing out.
http://act.greenpeace.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=18&ea.campaign.id=13413
If you want good science reporting form the Guardian you will have to wait until they actual get a journalists that knows something about science. For despite them being chock full of people with a very privileged background and so good eduction , they have not one member of staff how actual did science for their degree . Or to be frank given that their editors made it clear they are fully and blindly supportive of the AGW scare, if you want accurate reporting over AGW your going to have to wait until ,ironically, hell freezes over.
You should know that here (in England) Cocker is known as a ‘twat’, and the Guardian as a leftist rag. I don’t know if you Americans know this either, but the Guardian is often referred to as the ‘Grauniad’ – since they once made so many spelling mistakes in thier (see what I did there?) articles.
If you go right to the bottom of the article it says ” Source: Greenpeace ” – says it all really !
“Her work is underpinned by rigorous research and scientific debate”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/13/observer-ethical-awards-2012-judge-lucy-siegle
The Guardian is held in contempt by those of us in the UK who aren’t socialists. Facts never get in the way of its leftist views, if the Guardian told me that grass was green and the sky was blue I would go outside to check! If anyone wants a job as a Diversity Co-ordinator or a Gay and Lesbian Outreach Officer for a Labour town or city council, the Guardian every Thursday is an essential read.
If AGW is affecting the whole planet and ice in the Arctic is decreasing, why in the Antarctic, is it increasing?
Meanwhile , in the real world heavy sea ice looks likely to delay Shell Acrtic`s drilling
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-heavy-ice-shell-alaska-arctic.html
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The Grauniad is not going to change the habits of a lifetime overnight. They were born as a Marxist pressure group, and following the predictable demise of Marxism in the Communist East they jumped on the next great Marxist crusade – Environmentalism. The Grauniad have been trying to subvert Western culture for over 100 years now, along with their anti-establishment cousins at the BBC, and they are not about to stop tomorrow.
The interesting thing about the Grauniad is the way it jumps on bandwagons to champion any minority cause. Back in 1917 they were instrumental in the setting up of the state of Israel, because that was the celebrity minority cause of the early 20th century. But today, they and the liberal-left are so rabidly anti-Israel, one would have thought that they were being funded by Saudi Arabia. Today, the Grauniad (and the BBC) support Hamas as being the only bastion of liberal democracy in the Near East (!?) Such, are the absurd politics of the European left.
But the underlying subversiveness of the Grauniad is slowly sinking in to the general public, and Grauniad sales are declining much faster than the sea-ice charts. Perhaps that was the problem here – Lucy Seigle mixed up the Arctic Sea Ice chart with the Grauniad circulation chart, and thus thought the ice had declined by 75% in 30 years….
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Last financial year end, the Guardian was running at a loss of £25 million pounds. With reporting like that, I look forward to next year’s numbers.
Pointman
If you don’t have a proper baseline any claim you make can be ‘true’. For sure you can’t falsify it. But, indeed, good enough for what passes for journalism these days.
Like all journalists and numbers are they getting it the wrong way round. Did she mean 75% of levels from 30 years ago. In other words sea ice is down 25%? Percentages is such a hard concept to understand you know for media types.
“The Guardian is only off by 7.675 million square kilometers…close enough for journo work I suppose.”
No, but close enough for The Guardian, which has very little to do with journalism.
Aren’t the “facts” supplied by “Greenpeace”? Isn’t that what “Source: Greenpeace” means?
It’s worthwhile reading some of the news reports going back to the 1940s up till the present. Claims of Arctic spiral meltdown are not new. Claims of ice-free North Pole are not new either.
In 1972 an Arctic specialist by the name of Bernt Balchen claimed the Arctic ocean could be ice-free by the year 2000. 😉
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/polar-meltdown/
From other press:
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a first-hand look Saturday at the way a warming climate is changing the Arctic, opening the region to competition for vast oil reserves.
Returning from a tour of the Arctic coastline aboard a Norwegian research trawler with scientists and government officials, Clinton told reporters that she learned “many of the predictions about warming in the Arctic are being surpassed by the actual data.”
Well, easier to pontificate on this than Syria….
The Arctic could become ice-free in 10-20 years? I thought it was 5 years, ending this year, next year, two years ago or sometime. There are so many claims of impending doom that I find it hard to track them. They should have a section in doom central for ice-free Arctic, so I’d know when and how much worry to schedule.
Only if. If I had the MONEY I would sue, there are volumes of lies and deceptive manipulation in this A/wipe!
Is comparing extent to volume the same thing? Not an expert and don’t even play one on TV, but coverage and volume seem to be comparing apples and oranges to me. Not that I think the arctic is screaming, just wondering how the two relate.
I thought Jarvis Cocker was lead singer for Pulp. If this is the same Cocker then that says it all.