Bishop Hill Glaciologists condemn Guardian "misinformation"
Sep 17, 2011 Climate: other The Guardian has been reporting details of a new atlas, which reports 15% ice loss in Greenland, ascribing the changes (bien sur) to global warming.
The world's biggest physical changes in the past few years are mostly seen nearest the poles where climate change has been most extreme. Greenland appears considerably browner round the edges, having lost around 15%, or 300,000 sq km, of its permanent ice cover. Antarctica is smaller following the break-up of the Larsen B and Wilkins ice shelves.
I'm therefore grateful to Tamsin Edwards for pointing me to this thread on the Cryolist email list.
Dear Cryolisters, especially media people 'listening' in: No doubt this 'news' story and Atlas are going to be repeated far any wide. THIS IS NOT WHAT IS HAPPENING. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. THIS IS NOT WHAT SCIENTISTS ARE SAYING. Greenland specialists, people like Michele Cittero, Peter Ahlstrom, Leigh Stearns, Gordon Hamilton, Waleed Abdalati and many more have documented what actuallyIS happening in Greenland, and it involves some incredibly rapid changes, mainly increasing melting, thinning, andretreat; and slight thickening in some sectors, but overall Greenland is a story of massive, rapid retreat. Special dynamics are at play, and probably climate warming as well. However, this Guardian story is ridiculouslyoff base, way exaggerated relative to the reality of rapid change in Greenland. I don't know how exactly the Times Atlas produced their results, but they are NOT scientific results. Therefore, media be warned: play on this story at your own serious risk of losing credibility. I am certain that the scientists mentioned above, and many others,will respond with actual data, throughly peer-reviewed publications, and lots of data to show what is happening.It isa dramatic story, many dramatic stories. But don't believe this Guardian article.Sorry, Guardian. I used to just grin and bear it when things like this happen. But the IPCC fiasco and the whole'sad chain leading up to it, where media played on media and NGO's played on each other, without actual sciencein the loop, leads me to believe that there is no such thing as being too critical with the media. This Greenland story is not science; did I say that already? OK, now somebody can figure out where the new brown or the lossof old white came from. Not from proper treatment of data, that's for sure. Thanks to Jim Torson and Graham Cogley for bringing this new 'news' to my attention. It is a crisis of misinformationonly if the media or politicians fail to consult with scientists.
Reader Comments (132)
Shub writes:
'Jethro Lennox, the editor of the Atlas, stands behind his brown Greenland. He pulls a Hasnain:
"We are increasingly concerned that in the near future important geographical features will disappear for ever. Greenland could reach a tipping point in about 30 years,"'
It will be really interesting to see what Betts has to say about all this.
In other news, BBD has succeeded in making his signature "BBD" synonymous with "STP" for "skip this post."
Therefore, media be warned: play on this story at your own serious risk of losing credibility.
Coffee ... meet keyboard and screen ....
Thanks for the info BBD. What I am doing is to completely re-write the aerosol optical physics of clouds.. Sagan got it very wrong because he assumed just one optical process, biased diffuse scattering, when there are two.
Twomey knew this but because he talked of spherical albedo asymptoting to 1, climate science imagines that clouds with small droplets can give high albedos. This is not true - the diffuse scattering hemispherical albedo is 0.5 because for no absorption, the process is symmetrical. Any higher albedo is the second process which for dark [underneath] rain clouds effectively shields the interior.
Twomey warned of this mistake in one of his papers. Come 2004 when there was no evidence of the AIE being high enough, NASA substituted his physics with the surface reflection claim which is apparently widely believed. It's a confidence trick. Hansen is doing it again by claiming double the AIE.
What you must realise is that low CCN ice age clouds were very dark because droplets rapidly coarsen and it's an r^6 effect. So the warming is by the 2nd AIE reducing direct backscattering. This is an incredibly powerful form of GW. No need for CO2 and because the AIE is warming and present GHG heating has been wrongly estimated as 33K when it's nearer 10K, intrinsic CO2 climate sensitivity has been overestimated by c. 9 and it could be slightly negative.
Basically, climate science went overboard on the Twomey effect which only applies to thin clouds. has misdiagnosed the strong wavelength dependence of direct backscattering as the Twomey effect and is now scratching around to find reasons to explain why we're now cooling.
The Stott argument about water doing more absorbing is wrong presumably because to get funding they had to toe the party line. It's the increase of cloud light transmission by what can be up to 50% in the blue-green[1/wavelength^4]. People looking at the Arctic comment how the clouds are grey nor white. Basically, climate science with its fixation on COs has really cocked it up.
Shub
I said this:
So your entire comment is a sloppily constructed straw-man. As per.
Alistair
You were kind enough to share your hypothesis with me on BH some time back. I recall a subsequent exchange over at the Blackboard where several evidently knowledgeable commenters expressed various dissatisfactions with it.
I really have no idea whether you are on to something, so my advice is to publish and let's see how it pans out. I recall you saying during our previous conversations that you felt deterred by gatekeeping and pal-review, but nevertheless, you must try. If you believe in your hypothesis (as you seem to), then you really have no choice.
Thanks BBD: another point re Stott is that when the deep currents reach the tropical sea surface, they trigger phytoplankton blooms there as well,. So, you don't need any CO2-GW.
In a long research career I have found that reductio ad absurdum is a good way out of a log jam. Take away the CO2, back radiation and cooling AIE drugs from climate scientists and they might have to think instead of the intellectual masturbation called modelling.
That has proved a dead end and we now have the absurdity of Hansen and Trenberth locking out the experimentalists because the real world doesn't fit their imaginary world.
I have written a paper and I shall publish if I can, but it's total heresy. Spencer thinks I am a physicist when I'm an engineer with a tremendous amount of heat transfer experience plus nano particle optics.
Here's a bit of homework for you. Why are thick rain clouds so dark when according to NASA, they should be white and fluffy. And it's nothing to do with absorption - that was proved 20 years' ago.
It makes me so angry seeing how much money has been spent by deadbeats at the top of climate science and the NERC or whatever it is now who thought that because the high solar activity of the last century was warming the planet, they didn't have do do their damned job and eliminate all other possible scientific explanations.
As for bloody Stern, common purpose nitwits the lot of them.
not banned
First, this:
You are editorialising. Stop it.
Second, you cannot work through this in small simple steps in blog comments. I have linked repeatedly to Science of Doom, where detailed, serialised articles attempt to answer your questions.
Currently, you reject a large area of atmospheric physics without (by your own repeated admission), having the first idea of the science involved.
You can remain in self-imposed ignorance, or you can do the necessary hard work and inform yourself. Understanding the RTEs line-by-line is not necessary to understanding what is being calculated and roughly how.
Asking me to do it for you is both a cheap rhetorical trick and the sign of intellectual laziness.
BBD, I think your response to my simple/clear/unambiguous statement is very telling and provides us all with a better understanding of your way of thinking. I shall certainly bear this in mind when considering your future contributions.
I believe Burns expressed it best when he said...
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion"
Dave Salt
That cuts both ways.
Sep 17, 2011 at 11:34 AM | Lazarus
QED
Eyeballing it, there seems to be a correlation between the recent decline of AGW believability and the recent increase in BBD commenting activity.
Andrew
Why do you think this article was not open to comment ?
The Guardian have made it more than clear they are fully and totally committed to supporting AGW, its editorial policy as well has being the religion they been happy to sign up to. The irony is for all there claimed addiction to the science there is not one journalists amongst that actual has any scientific background and their more then happy to run PR and smear stories for Bob 'fast fingers' Ward .
Frankly if you really want to consider the science behind AGW ,the Guardian is one of the worst places you could go .
BBD, I stand by my original comment.
Words mean things and people form opinions of our ideas and attitudes by what we say. I'm perfectly happy to let others asses this little interchange and draw their own conclusions.
Shub wrote:
Theo Goodwin wrote:
Bad Andrew wrote:
Indeed. It looks like we're in for yet another charge of the one-person zealous crusading blight brigade. Alas, s/he seems to have missed the helpful hint I had offered [Sep 15, 2011 at 8:44 AM]:
I have long been facinated to hear the climate scientist explanation for the glacier girl entombment in Greenland, since here we have direct evidence of the accumation of 268 feet of new ice in Greenland between July 15, 1942 and July 15, 1992. Exactly 50 years to the day of proven ice accretion in Greenland spanning most of late 20th C supposed warming.
The story starts here
http://p38assn.org/glacier-girl.htm
And ends here
http://p38assn.org/glacier-girl-recovery.htm
Making false claims by way of maps is an ancient tradition.
The AGW community is desperate to hang on to their social capital and public largesse.
Fabricating a map about Greenland, where basically no one lives or goes to is a great wayto promote the AGW scam.
Pharos
We have direct evidence of the accumation of 268 feet of new snow on the Greenland Ice Sheet between July 15, 1942 and July 15, 1992. Which is hardly shocking.
Very profound, BBD
And also true. So we should be happy, surely?
"So we should be happy, surely?"
We are BBD, because if the number and futility of your comments are any indication, the AGW movement is fading.
Andrew
Oh BBD, great teacher, I beseech you - share your knowledge!...
... or did you already?
Hilary
And a very good evening to you too.
Tamsin Edwards
Most grateful likewise.
All we really want is true unadulterated data. Unmassaged. Trustworthy. We can not progress to debate the interpretation without that confidence
Do you think the editors will correct or retract???????
I think not ................. I hope not!
We need the alarmist/warmist group to defend the indefendsible because it exposes to the public the rank activism, the continual lies and the flawed politics at the heart of CAGW.
@Mac Sep 18, 2011 at 7:17 AM
"Politics" are often imperfect at best. Policies which are derived from such imperfect politics are (as you quite rightly note) flawed. So I fixed this for you :-)
I really don't want to buy into any of the various little turf wars that have ignited on this thread, but the earlier (shortish) attention to clouds caught my eye. I have this meagre observation to offer, which may well be rubbish, I don't know...
On a recent long intercontinental flight, nicotine patches doing their job nicely, I was gazing down from 11km on a vast cloud bank, horizon to horizon, reflected photons almost blinding, and it struck me that the surface seemed fractal. Perhaps it was always there but I'd never noticed that before.
I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago on WUWT but the very few responses referred to fractal apropos clouds just as a method of modelling them, really nothing to do with their structure or basic reflective properties. Has anyone else noticed this? Is there any significance? Am I imagining it all?
Flawed politics leads to erroneous policies !
BBD you said that the Arctic ice extent was identical to 2007 when it's 6.4% less. Then you went on to say it was less having been pulled up by a poster. Then you pointed to the second statement as evidence that you hadn't said it was the same.
Do warmist take some sort of course in obfuscation? If you have get your money back, if you want to obfuscate make your statement as vague as possible, don't put out statements that are clear enough to be repudiated in seconds and then say you never said what you said, it makes you look evasive and the old BBD was anything but that.
@LevelGaze, my knowledge of clouds and fractals is vanishingly small, but I think you may well be correct, and there was a scientific paper by someone called S. Lovejoy in 1982, which appears to support your observation.
Re talk of Greenland and Chinese treasure fleets, the current evidence for this story may be on the dodgy side, but it's one of those tales that surely deserves to be true. I think it fair to say we know far less than we would like to know about the medieval world and about antiquity, and this is the sort of rumour that helps to stimulate an appetite for learning and discovery. As in the case of science, if all of history was known and catalogued down to the nth degree ("settled", to coin a phrase), what a dull world it would be.
@Alex
Aha, thank you for that. I see the gent has also published on related matters, but that particular paper is only abstracted on Pubmed. I must take myself off to the local university library soon.
LevelGaze -
Try http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~gang/eprints/eprintLovejoy/neweprint/Lovejoy.Science.1982.pdf
Thanks HaroldW, got the PDF already via Google Scholar (must remember to use this feature more). Haven't perused it yet.
geronimo
Let's try and unpick this.
First, I immediately admitted that I'd over-stated the case:
The problem arose because I did so in reply to Alistair (who also raised the question) and not to DS. Why - because our posts crossed.
Realising what has happened, I immediately reply to DS, with a link to this article and the following excerpt from it:
Naively, I expected DS to read my bloody comment and links and think about the implications. But he didn't.
Instead, he started to whine and nit-pick, and I lost my rag.
Evasive? No. A mess? Yes.
Let's rememeber what emerges when we look at all the data, not just the carefully cherry-picked ARCTIC-ROOS:
Now, do you see why I got annoyed with DS? The man's practically calling me a liar (as are you), but I wasn't the one doing the cherry-picking.
I hope this settles any doubts you may have about my being evasive.
BBD: I am most certainly not calling you a liar, please accept my word for that. What I am commenting on is that first of all you said that the Arctic sea ice extent for 2011 was the same as 2007, then you said it wasn't and when challenged about the first statement pointed to the second. You can't possibly lie if you've said everything. Now you quote a warmist site which tells us that 3 data sets say it's a record and three say it isn't. One couldn't accuse you of cherry picking because you've used both sides of the case.
Personally I don't believe that the Arctic sea ice extent tells us anything about climate change and won't because there is sufficient evidence to support sea ice expanding and reducing in seemingly random (with respect to global temperature that is) cycles.
In 2007 the arctic sea ice extent was at an all time low (all time being since the introduction of satellites in 1979) the Antarctic almost to the day was at an all time high, but nobody mentions that, why is that do you think?
BBD, there’s an old saying that when you find yourself in a whole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.
I’ll remind you that the subject of this thread is misinformation and misrepresentation of data. All I did was to point out that what you said was clearly wrong with respect to the empirical/observational data presented at the linked web page.
I had expected you to qualify things by saying something like “OK it may not exactly tie but it’s close enough to raise concerns”: not necessarily an apology but at least an acknowledgement that things were not quite as bad as 2007. Instead you chose to not only ignore my point but to throw in something that seemed to me like a clear attempt at misdirection: a well known technique used by both illusionists and politicians throughout the ages.
The fact that you consider this as nit-picking speaks volumes about your current perspective and ability to understand the way others may see things. That you then accuse me of not reading your links when you have clearly ignored my original point is also rather hypocritical.
I don’t know what epiphany you’ve undergone in recent months, or even if you’re the same person that use to post as BBD, but do know that the level of respect I use to have for your signature has undergone a significant devaluation in recent times. The fact that you’ve done this on-record is both amazing and also rather disappointing.
BBD - have you read this one at Science of Doom?:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2009/12/13/understanding-the-flaw/
Yes, I've wondered lately if we now have the same BBD as of yore.
Only last year, he posted, in reply to ZDB:-
Perhaps BBD could tell us the story of his "road to Damascus conversion" moment.
not banned
Yes. Now do go on and read the rest of the site. Perhaps now you will have more confidence in what you find there.
BBD - it wasn't the first post I've read there. How about you?
Foxgoose and Dave Salt
I'm the same BBD. Surely you can tell from the quote FG provides ;-) ? I've changed my mind, that's all.
There was no Damascene conversion. I just kept on reading and thinking and trying not to let my personal bias get in the way.
It's interesting that various people thought my comments were worth reading until they started to disagree with the content.
Why not just disagree without the slurs and snark? Solid, well-referenced arguments stand up on their own.
No "slurs or snark" BBD - just puzzled.
From your posting history here, you obviously studied the published science of CAGW thoroughly over a long period and, until some point in the last few months, comprehensively rejected it.
Recently, you apparently decided that your previously carefully thought out position was just "personal bias" which you've now managed to put out of the way.
Now, colour me sceptical, but I've been on the planet a fair few years and the only people I've ever seen execute a 180 degree philosophical handbrake turn like that are born again Christians who've just seen the light.
Assuming Al Gore didn't appear, bathed in light, at the end of your bed one night, clutching a copy of IPCC AR4 - I'm suspicious that you may have been a false flag "sleeper" all the time.
But then, as I said, I'm a self confessed sceptic.
Foxgoose
Amusing, but unnecessarily paranoid. Simple explanation: people usually change their views as they explore complex topics over a prolonged period.
"Simple explanation: people usually change their views as they explore complex topics over a prolonged period."
Have you got any solid, well-referenced arguments to back that up?
Human cognitive development from birth onwards.
Gosh! It's a wonder anybody ever forms an opinion!
The study of genetics is inherently interesting to my students because they can relate to it.-Bvlgari Rettangolo watches uk sale
The BBC's Richard Black has just reported a reaction from the Scott Polar Research Institute to the error:
Mr Black does not mention the Guardian article, for some reason, but he does mention the following:
Murdoch! (Ominous flash of lightning and peal of thunder.)
Kudos to Julian Dowdeswell et al for their efforts to highlight the 15% error.
Now all we have to do is correct the other misinformation in the Atlas and press release, as Richard Black repeats: "...The break-up of some Antarctic ice shelves due to climate change, the shrinking of inland waters such as the Dead and Aral Seas, and the drying up of rivers such as the Colorado River are all documented."
You would think that as the 15% claim having been exposed as total bollocks, Black would want to at least check the accuracy of the other alarmist claims...
lapogus
Yes. I thought the Aral Sea dried up because its tributary rivers were depleted/diverted for cotton cultivation. Man-made (Soviet man at that), but nothing to do with CC.
I also thought that abstraction was why the Colorado runs lower these days. Not too sure about the Dead Sea.
Misrepresentation is misrepresentation. It's wrong, and it should be avoided at all costs.
"I just kept on reading and thinking and trying not to let my personal bias get in the way."
BBD,
I'm of course, skeptical, of this assertion. Can you provide something a little more scientific/believable?
Andrew