As the climate science continues to strengthen, and as the observational data around the world continue to accumulate, those who deny the reality or severity of human-induced climate change are getting increasingly desperate. As evidence piles up and as our weather worsens, their positions get weaker and weaker and their claims that the climate isn't changing, or isn't changing because of human actions get harder to support, their voices get more strident, and their language and vitriol get uglier.
Climate deniers cannot make a case against human-caused climate change without desperately manipulating, misrepresenting, or simply misunderstanding the science. While there are examples of their bad science (BS) every day, a particularly egregious case has played out in New Mexico in the past week.
In 2009, Harrison Schmitt, a former senator, astronaut, and self-described climate "denier" (and potentially the Energy Secretary to the new New Mexican governor), sent a paper to NASA riddled with long-debunked errors of science. Others have written about this paper, taking it apart error by error. But one particular mistake lies at the heart of this week's dust-up in New Mexico. In that paper Schmitt said:
"How long this cooling trend will persist remains to be seen; however, Greenland glaciers have been advancing since 2006, Artic [sic] sea ice has returned to 1989 levels of coverage, and snowy, cold winters and cool summers have dominated northern North America and Europe."All four of these statements are wrong:
In The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper on January 24, Dr. Mark Boslough (an adjunct professor of Earth and Planetary Science at UNM, with a doctorate from CalTech) noted the errors in Schmitt's statement and wrote how he tried to privately point them out to Schmitt, but that Schmitt never corrected them. The error that has stirred up the new debate in New Mexico is the third one "Artic [sic] sea ice has returned to 1989 levels of coverage." [John Cook has also tackled this here in an excellent Skeptical Science post.]
Arctic Sea Ice: Specific, Verifiable Data
First and most simply, Boslough is right and Schmitt is wrong. No matter how you measure it, there was less Arctic sea ice in 2009 than in 1989:
• The average area of Arctic ice was less in 2009.
• The average extent of Arctic ice was less in 2009.
• The volume of Arctic ice was less in 2009.
• The maximum amount of ice (in winter) was less in 2009.
• The minimum amount of ice (in summer) was less in 2009.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. And wrong. If you tried, you couldn't find an honest argument that there was more, or even equal, Arctic ice in 2009 compared to 1989.
Enter the Heartland Institute and its President Joseph Bast. They tried and couldn't either. But rather than simply acknowledging Schmitt's first error, Bast and the Heartland Institute tried a trick, called "cherry picking" - where someone carefully selects one piece of data to prove a point while ignoring or hiding all of the other data points that refute it. That's a bad, dishonest no-no. Scientists destroy their reputations when they do this (since inevitably other scientists find out). And the Heartland Institute's cherry picking is one of the most extreme examples I've ever seen of misrepresentation of science and data. (Though here's another from the Bush White House.)
Here is how Heartland's Bast chose to do it. On January 31st he wrote a misleading piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican criticizing Dr. Boslough, in which he says:
"In fact, National Snow and Ice Data Center records show conclusively that in April 2009, Arctic sea ice extent had indeed returned to and surpassed 1989 levels." (emphasis added)
In a desperate attempt to try to support Schmitt's false statement that there was as much or more ice in 2009 than 1989, he and Heartland searched through the ice records from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and found the single month (April), where the area of ice was higher in 2009 than 1989. There was less ice in 2009 in January, February, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, on average, the maximum, and the minimum. But not in April (and just barely). Figure 1 shows the monthly ice area for the Arctic for 1989 and 2009 and the carefully picked month of April. I've circled the data point Bost and Heartland "cherry-picked."
If Figure 1 was your bank statement for 1989 and 2009 could you claim with a straight face that you had more money in 2009 than 1989? And should anyone believe you?
Figure 1. Monthly Arctic ice area for 1989 and 2009. Graph prepared by Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, using Sea Ice Index. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center.
In fact, even if Schmitt had been right about 1989 (and remember, Schmitt said "1989" not "April 1989," -- that was a later desperate attempt by the Heartland Institute to save face and avoid admitting error) that also is cherry picking data. If we look at all the years in the complete record of ice data, the disappearing Arctic ice cap is irrefutable. Figure 2 shows all the years in the record back to 1979, showing the decreasing extent of Arctic ice. Even more dramatic is this graph showing the more serious loss of total amount of ice measured by volume.
Figure 2. Annual average Arctic ice extent from late 1978 through 2010. Graph prepared by Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, using Sea Ice Index. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center.
It doesn't get much more brazen than this effort by the Heartland Institute to mislead readers in New Mexico. Unfortunately, lots of readers probably fell for it. But scientists and honest researchers don't cherry-pick data to support pre-determined positions.
Follow Peter H. Gleick on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PeterGleick
http://climatecrocks.com/2011/02/07/how-to-pick-a-cherry/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrxE3uwHECs
New Mexico's governor, Susana Martinez, thought that Schmitt would make a great partner in dismantling NM's forward looking environmental policies but now.... not so much.
Have a climate change problem? Put a solid denier in charge of environmental policy.
Much of the southwest has been making environmental problems disappear with this sort of artistry since James Watt and the "Sagebrush Rebels."
Come back Ed Abbey, bring wrenches, we need you now, more than ever.
More here:http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/02/astronaut-new-mexico-energy.html
Wouldn’t it be just like the denial-dweebs to claim that this new paper in some way discredited the concept of man made global warming? You know, like Watt-Up-His-Anatomy ? Oh? He already did try to imply this? Somebody go tell Orkneygal! Quick! Oh? She already commented? Oh goodie!
Hey Orkneygal! How much does the Heartland Institute pay you to write here? Or do you do it for free?
Just wondering!
Have a lovely evening.
I don't know if you're aware of this but the Heartland Institute still has a webpage up that accuses you of being "deceitful" with respect to your column and comments here. They formulate their argument in part by asserting as they did downthread that "At the time Schmitt wrote the paper... Arctic sea ice had indeed recovered to 1989 levels" -- a claim that you in response demonstrated downthread to be patently false.
Perhaps you can send them an email, if you haven't already, informing of them of their ongoing publishing of a patent falsehood. After which, if they still keep that slander of you up on their website then whether the Heartland Institute are intentionally lying as opposed to engaging in mere reckless negligence will no longer be a debatable question.
Here's the link:
http://blog.heartland.org/2011/02/huffington-post-defends-false-climate-accusations/
Arctic climate variation under ancient greenhouse conditions
.....analyses revealed that the Arctic climate of the Late Cretaceous varied over various timescales with periodicities closely matching those observed in the modern Arctic. It therefore appears that the Arctic was subject to some of the same climatic influences in the Late Cretaceous as it is today, including ENSO, which periodically transmits equatorial influences to high-latitudes via ocean-atmosphere interactions.
“A modern Arctic lacking permanent sea ice should be subject to similar influences as it was under greenhouse conditions in the Late Cretaceous,” said Kemp.
This is important because there has been an ongoing debate about whether natural modes of climate variability such as ENSO and AO/ NAO would be perturbed or enhanced by global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Particular controversy has surrounded whether such warming could cause a permanent El Niño state or milder European winters.
“Based on our findings, it seems unlikely that man-made global warming would cause a permanent El Niño state,” concluded Kemp.....
http://noc.ac.uk/news/arctic-climate-variation-under-ancient-greenhouse-conditions
Also there is this science question on which you passed. Which is warmer, red or blue? People with real science exposure will instantly recognize the question and not ridicule it.
I sidestepped nothing. I passed on nothing.
The oversight was yours in not taking note of my responses at the time.
You are more than welcome to go back into the archives and retrieve my responses.
And, by the way, have you found Dr Trenberth's missing energy yet?
That said...
------------------------------------------------------
Orkneygal: "Paleoclimate reconstructions of the Early Holocene suggest that their were ice-free summers in the High Arctic in the past."
Per the report you cited to support your claim that is not correct, but I can see how you arrived at your conclusion based on this statement from the report's abstract:
"there appear to have been periods of ice free summers in the central Arctic Ocean."
Orkneygal: "it seems the Polar Bear, at least, survived the ice free Arctic Seas way back then."
Even the information provided in that abstract does not support your conclusion - the central Arctic Ocean is not the entire Arctic Ocean.
Also, the more precise wording as presented in the body of the report is:
"there appears even to have been periods of ice free summers in ***large parts of*** the central Arctic Ocean"
[emphasis mine]
In other words, per this report there appears to have been "large parts" of the Arctic Ocean that where ice-free during summers of the early Holocene, but there was nonetheless substantial summertime Arctic sea ice.
continued..
And what is your point, exactly?
Is your point that Arctic Sea Ice extent and amount is affected by atmospheric air temperature, snow and ice sublimation rate(s), shifting ocean currents, albedo changes due to volcanic ash and soot, wind shifts from changes in the Arctic Oscillation and other factors such as glacier calving, cosmic rays, etc.?
Or do you have no point?
Of course not. You evidently did not read what I wrote.
Orkneygal: "according to the peer review paper I provided to the readers of this thread."
As I just explained to you, no that is *not* according to the peer-reviewed paper that you provided. Again, according to the paper that you provided, as presented in the main body of the report:
"there ***appears*** even to have been periods of ice free summers in ***large parts of*** the central Arctic Ocean"
[ again, emphasis mine ]
Orkneygal: "And what is your point, exactly?"
My point, again, is that per the report that you cited your claim re- "ice free summers in the central Arctic Ocean" is not correct, and neither is your claim re- Polar Bears surviving "ice free Arctic Seas".
Is my point clear to you now?
Thank you for bringing that report to my attention, however - it is an interesting one. It both suggests that Polar Bears can survive in an Arctic with substantially less sea ice (but not "ice free" - far from it), and it provides yet another vivid indication of how extremely sensitive our planet is to relatively minor variations in average temperature -- during the warmest period of the Holocene, the Earth's average temperature may well have been cooler than what it has already risen to in this past decade.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
This is the first time in history where all of our information consistently says that there is an immediate threat to civilization on earth due to our activities. I understand that the "business as usual" set will do what they have always done, until the people say enough. This has been true throughout the course of human history. Instead of the welfare of a country being the proverbial straw that broke the camels back of power, we now have the entire human race as a potential casualty. I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of people on this planet see that there is a problem. I also believe that the vast majority have but a fractional idea of the gravity of our predicament.
The tip of the iceberg is revealing itself in the form of blizzards in the UK, drought in the Amazon and the death of a murder of crows or a school of fish across the globe.
Every scientist on the planet agrees on this: Ecosystems are delicately balanced at best and precariously tilted with extended human interaction. If we know this to be a fact, why is it not easily understood that our deluge of toxicity is upsetting the global ecosystem?
Mathew MacLeod
Declines in the summer sea ice extent have led to concerns within the scientific community that the Arctic Ocean may be nearing a tipping point, beyond which the sea ice cap could not recover. In such a scenario, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap outgoing radiation, and as the Sun beats down 24 hours a day during the Arctic summer, temperatures rise and melt what remains of the polar sea ice cap. The Arctic Ocean, now less reflective, would absorb more of the Sun's warmth, a feedback loop that would keep the ocean ice free.
However, new research by Tietsche et al. suggests that even if the Arctic Ocean sees an ice-free summer, it would not lead to catastrophic runaway ice melt. The researchers, using a general circulation model of the global ocean and the atmosphere, find that Arctic sea ice recovers within 2 years of an imposed ice-free summer to the conditions dictated by general climate conditions during that time. Furthermore, they find that this quick recovery occurs whether the ice-free summer is triggered in 2000 or in 2060, when global temperatures are predicted to be 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer...
...The result is a swift recovery of the Arctic summer sea ice cover from the imposed ice-free state.
http://www.agu.org/news/press/jhighlight_archives/2011/2011-02-09.shtml#one
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GL045698.shtml
And of course, this says nothing about Heartland's cherry-picking misrepresentation of science. Remember, they're trying to insinuate that the ice isn't disappearing....
Sadly, the actual technical paper is trapped behind a paywall, like so many scientific papers. That makes it difficult for serious amateurs to access the original information and try to sush out the details of the actual analysis. Therefore, those without access can't read for themselves what future scenarios, such as temperature changes, albedo effects, aerosol effects, and so on the modelers used in their GCM runs.
Your headline article is likely to attract a wide audience, some whom are interested in Heartland trying to float a porky and others who might be interested in Polar Ice news. I posted the link with the later group in mind, not the former.
Your observation might well be quite clever and insightful.
Perhaps you might address it directly to the Climate Scientists that have published the paper.
You well could be correct.
You might also find it useful that Paleoclimate reconstructions of the Early Holocene suggest that their were ice-free summers in the High Arctic in the past.
The affect on native eco-systems of the time is, of course, not fully known. Most scientific data is contained in the remains of the paleoclimate records about the ancient sea shores.
Not much is known about the mammals, the bird life, etc. that inhabited the solid areas of land and ice back then.
But it seems the Polar Bear, at least, survived the ice free Arctic Seas way back then. I hope it does next time too.
Commentary and link below-
"The combined sea ice data suggest that the seasonal Arctic sea ice cover was strongly reduced during most of the early Holocene and there appear to have been periods of ice free summers in the central Arctic Ocean."
Refence is behind a paywall, sadly-
New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling
Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature, Mainz, and Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, IFM-GEOMAR, Wischhofstr. 1-3, D-24148 Kiel, Germany
Accepted 26 August 2010. Available online 2 October 2010.
Jim Lakely, the communications director for Heartland, which cherry-picked these ice data, has tried to argue in comments here that Schmitt made no mistake because in April 2009 ice extent WAS greater than April 1989. Lakely says here: "That's the exact time that Schmitt submitted his paper saying Arctic sea ice had exceeded the levels of 1989."
This turns out to be false, like almost everything else Heartland has said about this. Once again Heartland is caught in a false statement. Actually, it turns out that Schmitt "submitted" his error-ridden paper to NASA in September 2009, NOT April as Lakely claims. Indeed, that document was created on September 16, 2009. Did Lakely know this (which makes it a lie) or just commit another error in a desperate attempt to hide Heartland's previous errors? Ask him.
Of course, Schmitt said "1989" not "April" anyway -- that was Heartland claiming April and cherrypicking the data. And in fact, as the graph above shows, there is NO measurement of any kind that supports Heartland and Schmitt's arguments ice in 2009 was greater than in 1989 in the Arctic.
Right click on it.
Select Document Properties.
Look at the description.
There is also a NASA email trail showing submittal of this paper in September 2009.
The page you are looking for may have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
Please try the following:
* If you typed the page address in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
* Open the LPI Home Page and look for links to the information you want.
* Try searching our site for the information you want.
* Click your Back button to try another link.
HTTP 404 - File Not Found
Thank you, Mr. Lakely, for giving us a sample of your organization's work.
"Al Gore doesn't have a 'science background,' yet he's the spokesman for your side."
Al Gore is but one a many spokespeople for the "side" that supports the scientific consensus on AGW theory. Other notable spokespeople include for example Ralph J. Cicerone, who is the current (since 2005) President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Cicerone not only has a "science background" but he is moreover a climate scientist.
jlakely: "How about we address the science as it is."
Ok let's do that, Mr. Lakely. Let's start here:
Do you agree that the mean global t emperature has statistically-significantly warmed over recent decades?
And if not, why not?
I thank you in advance for your direct and timely response.
And here is the skinny on your little boutique PR firm http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
Shilling for tobacco, for allowing Great Lakes water to be sold overseas, holding bogus conferences as PR stunts... you guys have the cushist job in PR. You don't have to show the client billable hours, (or do you? Never mind...) you get showered with great wads of cash from corporatists, and all it takes is the moral center of a flukeworm.
What a riot.
To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate:
In reply to “The Importance of Science in Addressing Climate Change”
On 28 January 2011, eighteen scientists sent a letter to members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate urging them to “take a fresh look at climate change.” Their intent, apparently, was to disparage the views of scientists who disagree with their contention that continued business-as-usual increases in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the burning of coal, gas, and oil will lead to a host of cataclysmic climate-related problems.
We, the undersigned, totally disagree with them and would like to take this opportunity to briefly state our side of the story.....
(intro. to a response to the letter from eightteen climate scientists, signed by many scientists)
The original letter, of course, can be seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/an-open-letter-to-the-new_b_816999.html
"Judge Judy’s verdict: Score one for the “deniers”. Rationale:
1. The consensus scientists attempt to dismiss the skeptical scientists by calling them “deniers.” By contrast, the skeptics refute the statement made by the consensus scientists that there is no scientific evidence that refutes the consensus, and are not disrespectful in the process.
2. The skeptics have come up with a relatively impressive list of signatories, with 2 NAS members (compared to 6 on the consensus list). Many of the people on the skeptics list are not people that are easily dismissed
3. The consensus scientists fired the first “shot” in this insane little battle.
It wouldn’t matter if this was a victimless war. The chief victim is climate science and its credibility.
"The IPCC WGI report is a good summary of the overall state of the science."
-- Dr. Judith Curry, October 25, 2010
So he would have been looking at the following data: http://nsidc.org/news/images/20081002_Figure3.png
Certainly he read the following report by the NSIDC if he wanted to understand the trend: http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081002_seaice_pressrelease.html
NSIDC said:
"dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979,"
"The 2008 season strongly reinforces the thirty-year downward trend in Arctic ice extent."
"When you look at the sharp decline that we’ve seen over the past thirty years, a ‘recovery’ from lowest to second lowest is no recovery at all."
"In March 2008, thin first-year ice covered a record high 73% of the Arctic Basin. While this might seem like a recovery of the ice, the large extent masked an important aspect of sea ice health; thin ice is more prone to melting out during summer. So, the widespread thin ice of spring 2008 set the stage for extensive ice loss over the melt season."
"The trend of decline in the Arctic continues, despite this year's slightly greater extent of sea ice. The Arctic is more vulnerable than ever."
So having read all that, Mr. Schmitt tries to tell NASA the sea ice has recovered.
Or he didn't bother to check his "facts."
And that spells FAIL
It is clear mr lakely is either disingenuous or unable to understand clearly written scientific terms that my 14 year old woud have no problem with