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?
==============================================================
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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Phil Clarke says:
June 4, 2012 at 1:34 am
This is a quote from the link you provided:
‘The data that Prof. Slingo rejected are part of PIOMAS, which is held in high regard, not only by me, but also by many experts in the field.’
PIOMAS stands for Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System so the question is: what does it output, data or the results of modelling?
Regards,
JS
Thanks Alan the Brit / Jonathan Smith.
I found a clip of Littlejohn vs. Toynbee on youtube:
http://youtu.be/CSLUtfubOis
It’s got 111 dislikes. Obviously Guardian readers don’t like the hypocrisy of its wealthier journalists pointed out to them.
Thanks to all the comments I am now more enlightened about the FACT!
C’mon Anthony, you lose credibility when you start comparing sea ice extent with a volume metric and saying they don’t match. Fair enough if you missed this when writing the article, but now it has been pointed out to you, it’s disingenuous not to update your post/ graph.
REPLY: Two things
1. I’m not convinced that the 75% loss number cited by Guardian reflected volume. I read it as extent from the beginning. Commenter Scott points out:
For those defending the 75% number by claiming it is volume…how can you argue that they’re using volume when you consider the sentences after it:
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.
If they were talking about volume, then last year was the LOWEST, not second lowest. Thus, if they’re talking about modeled volume (at the summer minimum), then the second sentence is wrong. If they’re talking about extent, then the first sentence is massively wrong. And if they’re talking about area, then I’d say both of the first two sentences are wrong. If they’re talking about times other than the minimum, then they’re wrong regardless of the metric. If they’re comparing maxima to minima, that’s just disingenuous.
And the observant reader might notice I included the third sentence in the quote too. Why? Because it shows their bias. If they’re mentioning the ice being gone at the north pole in 10-20 years, why didn’t they also say that it was predicted to be gone at the north pole in 2008? That’s like saying Harold Camping is making an end-of-world prediction for 2020 while failing to mention is past.
Sorry, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out of it…a pretty poor report no matter how you slice it.
2. Even if it did reflect volume via PIOMASS, Bill Illis points out:
Cryosat2 measured the average sea thickness across the Arctic basin at 2.5 metres at the end of March 2012.
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/CryoSat-Releases-First-Sea-Ice-Thickness-Map-2.jpg
The Icebridge radar overflights of the Arctic in late March 2012 measured the average sea ice thickness of the Western Arctic at 3.13 metres. and 3.57 metres above 80N.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/312/warc2sithickicebridge20.png
PIOMAS’ sea ice thickness is an average of 1.5 metres in March, 2012 so we should view PIOMAS as an unphysical model (which is really just a joke given that people are putting financial resources into it – talk about wasting public resources).
Some European says:
June 4, 2012 at 1:28 am
For the record, I largely agree with Some European. The reason for this is that I prefer to take the most conservative and forgiving approach when arguing against the unreasonables–that way they can say nothing against our high ground and are forced to defend their position rather than attack ours. There is enough stuff wrong with the Guardian article that there’s no reason to try to bolster our argument by only looking at extent/area.
-Scott
Mat L says:
June 4, 2012 at 6:14 am
And did you miss that the very next sentence in the Guardian article says that last year was the 2nd-lowest on record? Given that next sentence, it is clear that (a) they were talking about extent, or (b) they had no idea what they were talking about.
-Scott
I blame the universities for the appalling standards of modern journalism. Some very witty person recently remarked that universities first became post-modern. Then they became post-numerate. Then post-literate. They are now rapidly becoming post-sentient.
The current batch of journalists seem mostly to have been at university in the period spanning the post-numerate and post-literate stages. I shudder at the prospect of journalists of the post-sentient variety.
PIOMAS stands for Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System so the question is: what does it output, data or the results of modelling?
I think ‘processed data’ is the best description. There’s an excellent description of PIOMAS, with links to the literature, discussion of uncertainties, validation, calibration etc at Realclimate ..
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/
Exerpt :- We have also compared PIOMAS estimates with measurements from ICESat and conducted a number of model sensitivity studies. As a result of this evaluation our conservative estimates of the uncertainty of the linear ice volume trend from 1979-present is about 30%. While there is lots to do in improving both measurements and models to reduce the uncertainty in modeled ice volume, we can also say with great confidence that the decline in observed ice thickness is not just an effect of measurement sampling and that the total sea ice volume has been declining over the past 32 years at astonishing rates (for instance a 75% reduction in September volume from 1979 to 2011).
Now I don’t totally agree with the Greenpeace/Guardian choice of presenting just 75% as this is taken from the month showing the greatest loss (the mean is around 66%), though one could argue that for albedo changes this is the important number. However it is also clear that it makes no sense to try and rebut that number, which is a three-dimensional quantity, with figures for the change in extent, ignoring the changes in thickness. That really is ‘patently false’.
REPLY: Sorry Phil, wrong again. They were clearly talking about extent in the article, not volume, and PIOMASS as a model is not in line with measured Cryosat and overfly data. I’m still convinced that you are being paid to write this stuff by some NGO. – Anthony
Bill Illis Cryosat2 measured the average sea thickness across the Arctic basin at 2.5 metres at the end of March 2012.
Bill – your link is to a January/February map, and I am not sure one can do a good estimate of the average by eyeballing pixels. Do you have a link to the actual March data?
They were clearly talking about extent in the article, not volume,
Well, here is my reasoning …
The relevant quote is 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.
plus <Source: Greenpeace
Nothing about whether the 75% refers to extent or volume. However, what do Greenpeace say?
In 30 years we’ve lost 75% of the Arctic sea ice […] In 1979, at its lowest point, there were 16,855 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice. In 2011 that had dropped to 4,017 – a little over a quarter of that original figure.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/30-years-weve-lost-75-arctic-sea-ice-20120210
So fairly clearly, Greenpeace’s 75% figure refers to volume, measured in cubic km. Follow the link from that source and it takes you to the PIOMAS page where they write
Monthly averaged ice volume for September 2011 was 4,200 km3. This value is 66% lower than the mean over this period, 75% lower than the maximum in 1979, and 2.0 standard deviations below the 1979-2011 trend.
If you don’t like modelled results, Professor Peter Wadhams, who has resarched and published widely on the Arctic ice, testified to the UK parliament that observed ice thickness showed the same rate as the model
On a previous occasion (21 February) I testified to the Committee and showed them the results of submarine measurements of ice thickness combined with satellite observations of ice retreat. When these two datasets are combined , they demonstrate beyond doubt that the volume of sea ice in the Arctic has seriously diminished over the past 40 years, by about 75% in the case of the late summer volume.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmenvaud/writev/1739/arc26.htm
Phil, while Wadham’s claim is possibly representative, it contrasts with the US Navy PIPS model
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/29/arctic-ice-volume-has-increased-25-since-may-2008/
The Navy has to get things right, or people die, so I’m inclined to trust them more than some academic who can be wrong without consequence, or a money hungry NGO like Greenpeace, that uses alarm and panic to generate revenue.
Wadham makes no citation of submarine data, other than an appeal to authority:
You, Wadham, and your co-horts love PIOMAS because it fits with your meme. Met Office director Julia Slingo, a warmer herself, doesn’t think much of it and neither do I. The article remains as is, and is valid in its criticism because:
1. Guardian made no mention of volume. The entire article is sloppy.
2. PIOMAS isn’t definitive. It is a “no consequence if wrong” model
3. Extent doesn’t support 75% loss, neither does Navy PIPS.
Stop wasting my and everyone else’s valuable time with your diversions. The Guardian did a crappy job, they were wrong, and if you want to cite Greenpeace as a source, then I think that fits in line with what I have long suspected – you are a paid shill for them or for some related NGO, making your points no better than The Guardian’s citation.
pulp fiction
AW : Wadham (sic) makes no citation of submarine data, other than an appeal to authority:
No, that is not the case. Read to the end of Wadhams’ testimony, he gives references, here they are:-
References
Kwok, R., and D. A. Rothrock ( 2009 ), Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958- 2008, Geophys. Res. Lett ., 36, L15501.
Maslowsky, W., J. Haynes, R. Osinski, W Shaw (2011). The importance of oceanic forcing on Arctic sea ice melting. European Geophysical Union congress paper XY556. See also Proceedings, State of the Arctic 2010, NSIDC.
Perovich, D.K., J.A. Richter-Menge, K.F. Jones, and B. Light (2008). Sunlight, water, ice: Extreme Arctic sea ice melt during the summer of 2007. Geophysical Research Letters 35: L11501. doi: 10.1029/2008GL034007 .
Rothrock, D.A., Y. Yu, and G.A. Maykut. (1999). Thinning of the Arctic sea-ice cover . Geophysical Research Letters 26: 3469–3472.
Rothrock, D.A., J. Zhang, and Y. Yu. (2003). The arctic ice thickness anomaly of the 1990s: A consistent view from observations and models. Journal of Geophysical Research 108: 3083. doi: 10.1029/2001JC001208 .
Shakhova, N. and I. Semiletov (2012). Methane release from the East-Siberian Arctic Shelf and its connection with permafrost and hydrate destabilization: First results and potential future development. Geophys. Res., Vol. 14, EGU2012-3877-1.
Wadhams, P. (1990). Evidence for thinning of the Arctic ice cover north of Greenland. Nature 345: 795–797.
Wadhams, P., and N.R. Davis. (2000). Further evidence of ice thinning in the Arctic Ocean. Geophysical Research Letters 27: 3973–3975.
Wadhams, P., and N.R. Davis (2001). Arctic sea-ice morphological characteristics in summer 1996. Annals of Glaciology 33: 165–170.
Wadhams, P., N Hughes and J Rodrigues (2011). Arctic sea ice thickness characteristics in winter 2004 and 2007 from submarine sonar transects. J. Geophys. Res., 116, C00E02.
Dr Walt Meir discussed the differences between PIOMAS and PIPS 2.0 in a guest post, in which he pointed out that it had never actually been validated for thickness … http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/nsidcs-dr-walt-meier-on-pips-vs-piomas/
REPLY: Citing papers is not data. He made no mention of data values in his testimony, simply citing percentages and model estimates, trying to link them with other papers, that’s what I’m referring to. I didn’t find it convincing. And yes I’m well aware of Walt’s guest post, but again, I trust the military operational model over the academic models for the reason I cited.
I will put a note in my system though for this prediction he made:
Zwally’s ice free prediction is up in less than 3 months. I suspect he’ll fail.
Added: Wadhams really is quite the alarmist, saying (bold mine):
It is NOT accepted science. It is fabricated alarmism. I call bullshit on the man, and his testimony. That goes for you too Mr. Clarke.
-Anthony
Phil Clarke says:
June 4, 2012 at 7:36 am
“However, what do Greenpeace say?
“In 30 years we’ve lost 75% of the Arctic sea ice […] In 1979, at its lowest point, there were 16,855 cubic kilometres of Arctic sea ice. In 2011 that had dropped to 4,017 – a little over a quarter of that original figure.”
16,855 square kilometers pretty much fills the Arctic. Forgive my lack of math skills, but doesn’t 16,855 cubic kilometers mean an average of a kilometer thick icecover? I find that hard to believe.
Anthony, the post I made is one of a number of instances I seem to recall in which apples and oranges are being mixed. The sea ice area is not proof in and of itself the Guardian junk article is incorrect, since they could be talking about sea ice volume. So in my view, “Proof” is too strong a word for sea ice area. I’m glad to see Julia Sligo’s comment regarding sea ice volume, and taken together provides very strong evidence the Guardian article is bogus (I think it is).
In reading through some of the articles, I’ve seen comparisons that aren’t always apples to apples, and while the points tend to be clear, they leave a bit of wiggle room I, as a skeptic to the point I doubt catastrophic global warming, makes me feel uncomfortable. I personally would prefer equally strong worded points that don’t reach too far.
Meanwhile, having read this blog for years now, I’m really appreciative of all the work that goes into trying to understand the holes in the “consensus” thinking. Needless to say, if catastrophic global warming is a reality, it would change the world in unimaginably bad ways. However, I personally would rather see very strong arguments that stand on their own.
That’s the kind of verbal tail-chasing on which the whole Scario Scenario is based. “If warming is catastrophic, it will be a catastrophe!” Well, yeah. Say what?
There is zero historical evidence for harm from warming, and much evidence of benefit. The egregious extrapolations that underlie CAGW are spun out of whole cloth, and are patently targeted at highjacking the world’s economic and political power centers.
Ed Barbar says:
June 5, 2012 at 4:07 am
Needless to say, if catastrophic global warming is a reality, it would change the world in unimaginably bad ways.
Catastrophic global *cooling* — i.e., a return to full-blown glaciation — would change the world in even worse ways. A “catastrophic” rise of 0.1⁰C per decade should put us about where the Holocene Optimum was in another three hundred years…
Ed Barbar:- The sea ice area is not proof in and of itself the Guardian junk article is incorrect, since they could be talking about sea ice volume.
Given that the Guardian fact of a 75% decrease over 30 years is sourced to Greenpeace and that organisation talk of a 75% decrease in minimum summer volume over 30 years, either the Guardian meant ice volume – or this is the coincidence to end all coincidences!
Incidentally those who favour the Navy PIPS forecasting model over PIOMAS may be interested in this paper by Pamela Posey et al from the Oeanography Division of the Navy Research Lab.
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/09_Ocean_Posey.pdf
It only covers 2000-2008 however it details a steady decline in ice volume totalling 35% in the central Arctic and a ‘similar decreasing pattern’ in the Eastern and Western regions. Seems to me a 35% decrease over 8 years is not inconsistent with a 75% decline in 30.
So whether you use PIOMAS, PIPS or observational data the ice volume certainly has declined substantially in recent decades.
Glenn says:
June 4, 2012 at 6:12 pm”…16,855 square kilometers pretty much fills the Arctic. Forgive my lack of math skills, but doesn’t 16,855 cubic kilometers mean an average of a kilometer thick icecover? I find that hard to believe.”
So you should: it’s about 16 million square kilometers at maximum extent
I’ve read this thread with some care. And it seems that the Guardian’s “ridiculous” and “patently false” claim that 75% of the Arctic sea ice has been lost over 30 years is in fact true, if you take as your measure the well-regarded PIOMASS estimate of the annual minimum volume. The report is therefore neither “ridiculous” nor “patently false” – you may prefer a different estimate, but that doesn’t permit you this level of disdain. I ask Anthony Watts to correct his error at the top of this article.
What I said on Nick’s blog applies here too:
Bad journalism shouldn’t be defended by defending statements that remain only technically true but are still bad journalism as they remain grossly misleading. (Still why are we spending so much time on something that appeared in the MUSIC section of the Guardian?)
Phil Clarke says:
June 5, 2012 at 7:09 am
Yet their very next sentence says last year was the second lowest on record. PIOMAS modeled volume last year was the lowest on record, whereas extent was indeed the second lowest on record. So I could just as easily state that the Guardian meant ice extent or it was the “coincidence to end all coincidences!” In reality, I’m of the opinion that the Guardian had absolutely no idea what they were talking about and just restated what they read from a variety of sources, some PIOMAS and some extent, having no idea what the differences between the various metrics are. And while I don’t agree the approach chosen at WUWT to call out this poorly written Guardian article, it’s no less silly than people defending the Guardian’s claim by saying it’s referring to volume when the very next sentence in the article clearly contradicts a volume-based number.
And…
PaulB says:
June 5, 2012 at 10:59 am
Paul, while I agree that WUWT’s level of “disdain” is inappropriate, I serious doubt your claim about reading the thread wish “some care”. If you’d had, you wouldn’t think it was silly that Anthony preferred “a different estimate”, when clearly the Guardian itself prefers the extent measure as given by the very next sentence in its article! Apparently your reading with “some care” missed that the article HAS to be wrong, because it can only be correct if sentence 1 was talking about volume estimates while sentence 2 was talking about extent measurements. As far as the volume estimates being “well-regarded”, that may be true, but it appears you don’t even regard it well enough to get the acronym correct. So my guess is that you aren’t as knowledgable on the subject as most of the people here and you were just trolling.
Regards,
-Scott
Scott, we all make mistakes. Naturally I apologise for my typo, and I’m relieved that you weren’t misled. Meanwhile, you seem to have imagined my saying that it would be silly to prefer a different estimate.
I do not say that the Guardian in this case has been exemplary in the precision of its reporting. I say that it’s claim is not “ridiculous”, it’s not “patently false”, and it’s not a “blunder”.
Since you are concerned with precision in these matters, you might like to note that Anthony Watts has not only got all these things wrong, he’s also misreported the name of his chief witness, Julia Slingo . And Slingo did not say that the 75% reduction is “not credible”, she said that it’s “inconsistent with our estimates”.
Whereas the Guardian has been characteristically sloppy, this article is plain wrong. If Anthony Watts is more concerned with truth than polemic, he should correct it.
PaulB says:
June 5, 2012 at 10:33 pm
This article is no more wrong than the Guardian one. I’d actually say it’s been less so. I guess that’s just the differences in our respective biases.
In reality, anyone interested in the “truth” wouldn’t take the Guardian’s or WUWT’s statements on these matters as fact and instead would look at the available data and models themselves.
-Scott
But as a first approximation, or if you don’t have time to do the independent research, your odds of being right by taking WUWT’s word vs. the Grauniad’s are about 50:1.