BBC’s Failed ‘Fact Check’ of Daily Sceptic Report on Arctic Sea Ice

From THE DAILY SCEPTIC

by Chris Morrison

The BBC More or Less radio programme recently ‘fact checked’ the Daily Sceptic’s report that sea ice in the Arctic had soared to its highest level for 21 years on January 8th this year. Alas, the report was confirmed to be true so the Beeb went down the ‘cherry pick’ line of attack. Curiously missing from the programme was any mention that the article dealt mainly with long term trends in Arctic sea ice and concentrated on scientific evidence that showed at least a decade-long slow recovery.  The ‘fact check’ did little more than confirm the widely held suspicion that many BBC programmes are now infected with a need to crowbar a climate catastrophe narrative into broadcast messages.

Being accused of “cherry picking” by an organisation that routinely catastrophises bad weather events is of course risible. Taking lessons from a state-reliant operation that can publish a recent story from a “science correspondent” that starts, “Climate change threatens to ‘call time’ on the great British pint”, is also laughable. The 21-year high on January 8th was clearly identified as part of a number of short and long term trends, and in the third paragraph of the article it was noted that ”we must be careful not to follow alarmists down their chosen political path of cherry-picking and warning of climate collapse on the basis of individual events”.

It is evident that the BBC did little investigative work on the matter despite More or Less priding itself on checking statistics and data. Instead it relied on the usual ‘scientists say’, in this case Professor Julienne Stroeve. The UCL “Earth Scientist” attempted to muddy the Arctic sea ice waters by suggesting the ice extent is thinner, but presenter Tom Colls had to admit, “the data is not available yet”.

If you pick a particular day, you might just be talking about the weather, states Colls. There is no correlation between winter sea ice extent and how much the ice will melt in the summer, added Stroeve. What you see since 1979, continued Stroeve, is that the trend in Arctic sea ice is downwards for four decades. The overall decline in long term Arctic sea ice is very easy to see, adds Colls.

If you ‘cherry pick’ the date 1979, probably the high point for Arctic sea ice for almost a century, and draw a line to the present day, the cyclical trend is undoubtedly down. There was more ice around at the high point in 1979 than there is now, nobody disputes that. If you are just after a simple political message of climate collapse to promote the Net Zero fantasy, further examination of the data will be unwelcome. But a more detailed review of the statistics gives a more realistic interpretation. According to recent work published by the Arctic scientist Allan Astrup Jensen, the summer ice plateaued from 1979-97, fell for 10 years and then resumed a minimal downward trend from 2007. Jensen observes that either side of the 10 year fall after 1997, there have been minimal losses.

In fact using a four-year moving average, the trend has been slightly upwards over the last few years. The graph below is compiled by the investigative science writer Tony Heller and shows the recent stability of Arctic summer sea ice around the minimum recorded every September. A slight recovery from about 2012 can be clearly seen.

As we can see, More or Less has produced little more than a narrative-driven attempt to keep the Arctic sea ice poster scare going for as long as possible. Since the drop in the early part of the century, alarmists have been forecasting ice free summers in the Arctic in the near future. Sir David Attenborough told BBC viewers in 2022 that the Arctic could be ice free by 2035. Professor Stroeve claims to have briefed former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a man who has never lived down reporting that the ice could all be gone by 2014. In fact what has clearly been happening is noted by Tony Heller. They bury the old data going back to the 1950s, “and pretend they don’t notice sea ice is increasing again”. Nevertheless activists are starting to learn lessons about putting short timelines on their fanciful forecasts. For her part, Stroeve suggests ice free summers in the Arctic by the next 50 years.

Meanwhile, after the ‘hottest year ever’, the maximum winter sea ice for 2024 was recorded on March 14th at 15.01 million sq kms. Polar bear scientist Susan Crockford noted that the ‘U.S. headline writers’ at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said it was below the average for 1981-2010. Indeed it was, although this year’s total was within two standard deviations, states Crockford. But why compare the a 30-year average to 2010 when another decade of data to 2020 is available? Cynics might note that taking out the higher totals of 40 years ago and replacing them with the lower recent figures would produce – more or less –  an above average maximum in 2024.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.