People want to talk about sea ice, clearly. I still have nothing interesting to say about it, so instead, lets start off at KK‘s, who parrots the odd assertion that there are “Plenty of stories in media with just one scientist, and no counter view at all“. Which in turn is some septic whinging that he doesn’t have a clue about sea ice.
Ben Pile is so clueless that he thinks that, when “Laxon referred to measurements taken ‘this decade’”, he “presumed to mean since 2010”. Pile, in turn, is parroting Orlowski in the reliably unreliable El Rego, which says Listeners to Radio 4’s Today programme – and this includes much of the political elite – will have been alarmed to be told that “the Arctic could be ice-free on a summer’s day by the end of the decade”. Yet the evidence for this “trend” turns out to be drawn from less than two years worth of data.. El Rego knows this isn’t true – they know they’re bare-faced lying – and yet the story is still there, unmodified. And we know they know this because Laxon told them so in a comment to which the witless Orlowski replied.
As you’d expect, what Laxon meant was “the trends are derived by combining CryoSat-2 volume estimates with earlier (2003-2008) volume estimates from NASA’s ICESat mission [Kwok, JGR, 2009].” (He also says that if you “listen to my Today interview (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9744000/9744378.stm)” he even says so, which makes Pile / Orlowski even more clueless if so).
But why is Kloor pushing these idiots? The answer to KK’s original “What to Do About the “Polluted” Climate Discourse?” is, at least in part, stop listening to idiots and stop promoting them as reasonable sources.
Refs
* More junk from Pile: another article where he, presumably deliberately, misrepresents the state of “prediction” os future sea ice: “As I discussed in the article, according to ‘scientists’, the Arctic would be ice-free next year.”
wmconnolley: scienceblogs.com/stoat archive 
“Ben Pile is so clueless that he thinks that, when “Laxon referred to measurements taken ‘this decade’”, he “presumed to mean since 2010″.
You’re simply [tut tut, incivility redacted – W]. Laxon said ‘this decade’. This decade began in 2010, as did the Cryosat2 mission. I pointed out *his* mistake all by myself. And the object of the discussion is the single opinion of one researcher about his incomplete, unpublished, un-peer-reviewed study, and the many hundreds of alarming headlines it generated.
[No, the error is entirely yours. Laxon made an ambiguous statement, which to anyone who actually knew his work, or who is prepared to give ideas a fair hearing, was clear: he meant “a decade into the past”. You’re clueless about science, so you got it wrong. Were you honest, you’d admit you got it wrong, rather than digging in deeper -W]
Had Laxon’s research been complete, reviewed, published, rather than been prematurely thrust into the limelight by his own self-publicising self, and greedily taken up by the authors of alarmist copy, then there would no doubt have been less to say about the matter, and there would be a better quality of debate — something you’re clearly not able to make a judgement of, let alone even contribute to.
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You’ve already been firmly rebutted on Twitter:
clim8resistance William Connolley is a first-order moron.
[Not very imaginative our chap -W]
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Hey Ben, nice to see you are as clueless as ever about the science!
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William, interesting that you ‘redact’ the word ‘[redacted – W]’, but ‘clueless’, ‘idiots’, ‘lying’ are fine.
[Its my blog -W]
Guthrie. What ‘science’? There wasn’t any science. There were just the words of Laxon. Oh, and the incautious use of the word ‘unprecedented’ applied to a phenomenon with precedents.
[But Laxon was talking about science. Could it be that you don’t recognise it when you see or hear it? -W]
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The words of Laxon talking about the *science* he’s been working on….
Just because you are in bed with the climate denying “trust no-one” loons doesn’t mean everyone is.
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>”William, interesting that you ‘redact’ the word ‘stupid’, but ‘clueless’, ‘idiots’, ‘lying’ are fine. ”
Are you really asking to have pointed out that ‘clueless’,
‘idiots’, ‘lying’ are fine when they have been demonstrated to be true but you failed to demonstrate that Williams is stupid so it is appropriate for that to be redacted.
Interesting? nah just obvious.
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“[No, the error is entirely yours. Laxon made an ambiguous statement, which to anyone who actually knew his work, or who is prepared to give ideas a fair hearing, was clear: he meant “a decade into the past”. You’re clueless about science, so you got it wrong. Were you honest, you’d admit you got it wrong, rather than digging in deeper -W]”
You quote my ‘admission’ that I got it wrong.
[Yeees. Which was promising, well done. But then you’re digging in your heels here, and insisting it is all Laxon’s fault for being ambiguous, and then insisting that the natural meaning of “this decase…” must be, etc. etc.. Which may play well with your usual constituency (I’ve no idea who that is) but won’t work here -W]
And I make no apology for not being sufficiently familiar with Laxon’s work that I would know automatically which years his data were from. I looked for that research, so that I could make myself sufficiently familiar with it. It didn’t exist. It has not been published.
[Np, this won’t do. scholar.google says you’re lying. http://www.cpom.org/research/swl-nature.pdf for example. Laxon has certainly published on past observations from satellite of ice thickness -W]
Had it been published, I wouldn’t be able to say that the hundreds of headlines it generated weren’t based on ignorance. I — like the authors of all those headlines — can neither agree or disagree with Laxon’s analysis, or interpretation of it, because he hasn’t published his work. And yet the premature announcement of his research goes on to influence the broader debate, to form views of the state of the planet. That’s a problem I think you’re doing your best to avoid in your hatchet job.
I don’t make any claim to offer a definitive analysis of the science. Not on my blog. Not in either of the two posts you link to, or in my article — that you have ignored from your complaint — that followed a 90 minute conversation with Dr Mark Brandon, during which we discussed the nature of the media’s coverage of developments in climate science, and its problems. Yet both posts refer to that discussion, in which the importance of context to an understanding of the science and what happens when it is lost are both explored.
[If you’d like me to analyse another of your postings, you may do the obvious – link to it in the comments here. I don’t guarantee to do it, but I will at least read it -W]
Nonetheless, claims about the Arctic and other frozen places, have been self-evidently premature and prone to alarm. One doesn’t need to be a scientist to see that. But scientists aren’t necessarily any better placed to explain why. You demonstrate that beautifully.
[Now you’re back to digging in your heels and erecting strawman. What “claims” are you talking about? There are certainly some claims that are premature floating around the media (“no sea ice by 2013” is one. “Laxon’s analysis was based on only 2 years obs” is certainly another. But to say just “claims” is shoddy work -W]
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” And I make no apology for not being sufficiently familiar with Laxon’s work that I would know automatically which years his data were from.”
You’re not familiar with his research but you’re certain it’s trash.
Typical …
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“You’re not familiar with his research but you’re certain it’s trash.”
Where do I say it’s trash? I don’t. In fact I went out of my way to say that I couldn’t know whether or not it was trash or truth, because it wasn’t available to me. Let me remind you:
[http://www.cpom.org/research/swl-nature.pdf
But even if you can’t read it: you’re showing remarkably poor faith, to attack work you haven’t read as “a lie”. Which is still there, on your blog.
And even *after* you knew your attack was wrong, you linked to Orlowski’s attack-dog piece calling it “interesting”, even though you knew full well that Orlowski’s piece was wrong, and indeed based largely around the wrongness. Even now you’ve not made the slightest criticism of Orlowski for his error, or for allowing his error to stand -W]
” I looked for that research, so that I could make myself sufficiently familiar with it. It didn’t exist. It has not been published. Had it been published, I wouldn’t be able to say that the hundreds of headlines it generated weren’t based on ignorance. I — like the authors of all those headlines — can neither agree or disagree with Laxon’s analysis, or interpretation of it, because he hasn’t published his work. And yet the premature announcement of his research goes on to influence the broader debate, to form views of the state of the planet.”
[Why do you keep repeating your feeble excuses? As you’ve already admitted, you were wrong. Stop snivelling -W]
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Poor Ben seems to be undergoing a troll-trog phase transformation
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Followed some of those links, William, and the persistent pattern of misunderstanding is unmistakeable.
Re Kloor, don’t imagine that he’d like to do anything but increase the “pollution” in the climate discourse, conflict being ever so much easier to write about than the science itself.
[Aie, I don’t think KK has done well this time. But he still has an interesting viewpoint, so I will persist -W]
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> [Why do you keep repeating your feeble excuses? As you’ve already admitted, you were wrong. Stop snivelling -W]
I think it must be a case of you not being able to see the wood for the trees. The post that’s got your knickers in a knot is an email exchange between me and Laxon, in which I ask him for “the science” — something he wasn’t able to produce. Somehow, asking a scientist for his science is a gesture that betrays *my* bad faith.
Even stranger, you seem to think that articles published in 2003 somehow qualify anything Laxon says 9 years later as peer-reviewed and published ‘science’.
I think we’re getting a picture of what kind of faith it is you’re asking us to have in science. But it has nothing to do with science.
[Your entire beef with Laxon is the 2 years stuff. Take that away – as it has been taken away, looong past – and you have nothing.
Meanwhile, you still have not a word of criticism for Orlowski, who is still deliberately lying to people. Don’t you care? You purport to be interested in media reporting of climate change, but your interest seems rather one-sided.
I notice, also, that you haven’t taken up my offer to look at your oh-so-exciting post, if you’ll only link to it -W]
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“[Your entire beef with Laxon is the 2 years stuff. Take that away – as it has been taken away, looong past – and you have nothing.”
No, my ‘entire beef’ is not just with Laxon, and is that his premature claims cascaded through headlines, without anyone being able to check for themselves what his science actually had detected. I’ve said it several times now — Laxon may even be right. That’s not the point. Understand — you’re missing the point. Understand yet?
“Meanwhile, you still have not a word of criticism for Orlowski, who is still deliberately lying to people. ”
You’re so desperate to show that people are lying, or acting in bad faith, you’ve lost sight of what they’ve actually said. Orlowksi has a good point about whether the data series are long enough — and in this respect it seems Laxon may have been hoist by his own petard. But until the science is published, we’re not going to be any the wiser.
[So you’re still quite happy that Orlowski is lying to people, and you have not a word of criticism for this. That is rather revealing of your biases.
As to Laxon’s science: you can’t criticise it, because you haven’t read it. You went off half-cocked with false accusations about the timespan, based on nothing more than your inability to understand it. He’s now provided direct refs, so had you any honour you would read them and correct your posts. But you won’t -W]
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But until the science is published, we’re not going to be any the wiser.
Nonsense, anyone who has followed the Arctic sea ice situation closely knows that this preliminary data is largely correct.
Let’s talk about Arctic sea ice, shall we?
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What I notice among ‘skeptics’ is that they are dead scared of being alarmed. If anything crops up that could be the least worrisome (like the rapid loss of summer ice in the Arctic) they find reasons for it not to be worrisome. Reasons include:
– farming in Greenland
– it’s natural, nothing to worry about
– I don’t know anything about the Arctic so no-one knows what will happen in the Arctic
– climates are always changing, nothing to worry about
– overpopulation
None of the above are sensible in the context of the current decline in Arctic sea ice.
I rarely see skeptics discuss the impact on ecology, weather patterns, economic stability or otherwise with the race to exploit arctic mineral resources, impact on shipping or other matters. It’s pure head in the sand stuff: “I don’t want to be alarmed so I’ll not ‘believe’ or at least refuse to consider the matter.”
(As an aside, IMO this decade started in 2011, not 2010.)
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Ben is a bit like that baddy who comes if you say his name 3 times, or was it the devil?
Anyway, he has a long history of not understanding science and of slanting it to suit his particular ideology, which is somewhat similar to that of the Spiked lot, i.e. mankind and capitalism uber alles, AGW is just a plot to stop us doing what we like with the earth and nothing can stop us.
(Yes, that is a comic book rendering)
His audience is faux intellectual contrarians with a social studies bent, and anyone who thinks that anyone with an environmentalist outlook is actually a watermelon. Sometimes Ben does have a good point, but because of his hair trigger and inability to comprehend the science and separate out science from opinion, he often goes wrong.
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What I notice among ‘skeptics’ is that they are dead scared of being alarmed.
If you check Sir Stoat’s previous post, you’ll see this is not necessarily the case. Archibald has been explicitly prophesying doom for humanity due to his solar minimum, yet “skeptics” don’t seem to have any issues with that. Commonly they will embrace the possibility of environmental disasters, but the key is that they must be natural:
“We’re heading into a new ice age and it will be disatrous for humanity” = fine, and could even be supplemented with “luckily we’re emitting CO2 which will save us. Yay us.”
“Our actions are altering the environment and it will be disatrous for humanity” = alarmism.
As Don Draper says in Mad Men: ‘[advertising is] a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is OK. You are OK.’
Telling people that what they are doing is causing a problem is not good advertising, and will turn people off what you’re trying to promote, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
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long history of not understanding science and of slanting it to suit his particular ideology, somewhat similar to that of the Spiked lot
It should be noted out that both the Reg’s main deniers – Orlowski and Page – have links to the Spiked crowd. I once posted a comment on the Reg pointing this out, and it got, umm, spiked. I also posted a couple of other comments recently pointing out their hypocrisy wrt to the Watts/Berkeley announcements, and they didn’t make it past their censorship filter either. Considering the way they’re happy to accuse climate scientists of fraud, they’re awfully thin-skinned.
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Ben >>[in which I ask him for “the science” — something he wasn’t able to produce]
Ben has not actually asked me any questions about the science . If you look at the e-mail exchange you will see he has only asked “Could you explain where the research is published, so that we can see how you have produced these results from the data?”
Anyway for Ben and anyone else who’s actually interested in the science the ICESat paper on trends in ice volume (K09) is available to download here:
Click to access Kwok.2009.JGR.pdf
In paragraph 39 the 2003-8 trends from ICESat are provided: “The trend in ice volume is -1237/-862 km3/a (fall/ winter).”
What I have done it to combine this ICESat time-series with 2 winters of CryoSat data processed in the same way as described in Giles et al., GRL, 2008, and validated in a similar manner the to comparisons shown in K09, figure 4.
So go and read those two papers and if you have any questions about the “science’ they describe (you’ll need to understand those papers to understand mine as the methodologies are more or less the same) then let us know.
In addition why not go here: file: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/research/projects/arctic-sea-ice-volume-anomaly/data/ to download a simple ASCII text data. Once downloaded select out the September data (more or less day 244-274) since 2003, average the data for each year, and then use Excel to tell you what the slope in the data is. Then you’ll have your own trend in Arctic volume to report back.
PS. There are a dozen scientists and engineers on the paper which describes the CS-2/ICESat results.
[Thanks. And Hello Again, BTW -W]
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Mr. Pile also has a long post on the reporting of the GL melt, correctly displaying displeasure with some factual inaccuracies and abhorrent myths. Unfortunately he displays his one-sided-ness by not looking into the origin of the 150 years quote and finding out why it is not a cycle and why it is important that the melt happened now.
Afterward, the media (including Mr. Pile) was very concerned with correcting the ‘unprecedented’ stories, but was fairly absent when trying to get the story correct. Andy Revkin came somewhat close, but focused on the word ‘Unprecedented’ in the headline, then kinda peppered some information throughout the post, but only enough for someone like myself to take the time to figure it all out. To get the real import of the GL melt story you would have had to slug through the comment section and find Gavin S’s comment, which, for whatever reason was never followed up on by anyone as far as I can tell.
Also, hardly mentioned, was the ,a href=”http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=625″>post by Jason Box describing exactly what happened. Also it was missed that Box’s new paper predicts this exact happening (and not because of a cycle!).
So the press (Revkin and Pile) have correctly removed the mythical idea that this is unprecedented in the history of the Earth (a ridiculous notion anyway) and notes that GL still has ice, but now most everybody seems to think this is part of some 150 year cycle and that it was expectantly “right on time”.
Even more interesting is to wonder why Pile left the second part of Koenig’s NASA presser quote out of his “analysis”.
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3rd paragraph, 1st sentence should be:
Also, hardly mentioned, was the post by Jason Box describing exactly what happened.
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“What I notice among ‘skeptics’ is that they are dead scared of being alarmed.”
What they’re scared of is being responsible. It’s perfectly ok if the Arctic ice melts and severely disrupts weather so long as it’s outside their control or responsibility – natural causes or soot from China and Russia will do fine.
If we start from the position of things they’re responsible for then one of two things must be true: Nothing is actually happening or it won’t be so bad/will actually be good.
If the event is happening and will be bad then someone else must be responsible.
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Grypo – “Mr. Pile also has a long post on the reporting of the GL melt, correctly displaying displeasure with some factual inaccuracies and abhorrent myths. Unfortunately he displays his one-sided-ness by not looking into the origin of the 150 years quote and finding out why it is not a cycle and why it is important that the melt happened now.”
There seems to be some controversy over the 150 cycle claim. Either way, the point about the ‘unprecedented’ claim remains. What was at issue in the post you link to was the way the NASA PR spoke to existing narratives, leading to predictable headlines, which weren’t warranted by the actual story. What I found interesting is that it was actually climate scientists — rather than journalists — who were doing the correcting. Hence, the post that seems to have offended you is about my interview with sea ice scientist at the Open University, Mark Brandon.
I think you’re nit-picking. The article you’ve linked to wasn’t intended to get to the truth of the Greenland melting story, but to get to what might make them happen. Anyone still labouring under the misapprehension — if that is what it is — that the melt last month was an instance of a cyclic phenomenon, they should take it up with NASA.
“Even more interesting is to wonder why Pile left the second part of Koenig’s NASA presser quote out of his “analysis”.”
It’s not interesting at all. In fact, I picked up on her comments in the first draft of the article, and discussed them with Brandon. But I had a word limit, and as you point out, the article is quite long. There’s only so much one can discuss in any one article, and you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
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@ Ben Pile
“There’s only so much one can discuss in any one article, and you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”
Your efforts to please some of the people all of the time are duly noted.
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“There seems to be some controversy over the 150 cycle claim.”
The controversy is that the 150 years quote is from the Alley paper (I cited above) and it is there to denote a classification, not to denote any cyclical event. The rest of the paper discusses the climate and history behind the meltings and why they are clustered together during two very warm periods in the N Hemisphere. The event arises from certain conditions (see the Box post at Meltfactor), and these conditions are important in understanding what happened.
“I think you’re nit-picking. The article you’ve linked to wasn’t intended to get to the truth of the Greenland melting story”
I know. It appears to have been written to beat on some bad stories. This does not mean that it wasn’t misleading because it was.
“but to get to what might make them happen”
I don’t see that in your article, but no need. The Meltfactor post tells us why. Also, since Box’s paper predicted exactly what happened, we can be confident in the analysis.
“There’s only so much one can discuss in any one article, and you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”
I find it odd that you don’t want to mislead people in one direction, but are okay with people confused in another.
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“Ben has not actually asked me any questions about the science . ”
I did. You quote me asking you for ‘the science’.
You must have misread it as a request for word play and prevarication.
You should have more grace.
[That’s rich, coming from you -W]
You’ve announced your results to the press before you’ve published the science. Let’s call it premature publication. The least you could do is admit that the only cat you’ve let out of the bag is that peer review and publication count for little; it’s sufficient, in your mind, to simply say ‘I’m right. I’m right. I’m right’.
Rather than [oh come on -W] send me on a mission to collect and process the data — missing links to Cryosat data , btw — why don’t you send me your excel file, and your draft results? In fact, [incivility redacted -W] why don’t you just publish your results online right now?
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[Burrowed. If you have nothing to say, please don’t say it -W]
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AH, now this Pile guy is displaying the hatred seen from conservatives directed toward “authority figures” disagreeing with their ideological notions, like with Al Gore, Mann, Charles Monnett, etc. Similar to Orlowski sounding like an ass in comments with Laxon.
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[Burrowed – please read the comment policy – W]
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Ben Pile (amusing name that BTW — you must have had fun in primary school): Seymour Laxon has given you links to science. If you don’t understand what he has pointed you at what difference would two more years of data make to you? In any case, this is a nice distraction from the fact that climate change is happening and is clearly visible in all sorts of data from all over the world. But at least you can complain about one scientist, studying one area, who got on TV. Good thing we have a watch dog like Ben Pile on it — who knows what kind of headlines nature might slip past us.
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Ben Pile : “why don’t you send me your excel file, and your draft results?”
This is not the first time I see mentioned Excel files as some kind of “raw” data. That quite puzzles me : the last time I used an Excel file for *real* science (not accounting/administrative stuff), I stared blankly at the file for two minutes before asking my graduate how he was sure he had the *real* raw datas …
Is it a climate science stuff, ie the thermometers produce directly Excel spreadsheets, or aren’t real datas in binary files encoded with 4 bit floats which are then processed using standard langages (Fortran, C, Python, Perl for quick’n’dirty works) ?
… I know, rhetorical question, but you may already have found out what the real question was :]
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“4 bit floats” ???
One bit sign, one bit exponent, and three bit mantissa???
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Used for back-of-the-envelope calculations.
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oops sorry, my french mangled bits with bytes. My apologies !
(but I’ve seen one-bit correlations to retrieve propagating acoustic waves from ambient noise – and it works … )
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Speaking of sea ice… it looks like Cryosphere shows a new record…
[IJIS doesn’t, yet, but I’m resigned to it doing so soon -W]
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Resigned? Do you have an IJIS bet this year?
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bratisla,
Original temperature readings are usually to the nearest degree (C or F). But if you take monthly or annual averages you can eke out higher precision simply because the thermometer never reads exactly as recorded. You can prove this in Excel with random white noise (round to nearest interger values, take average, compare to original FP average. I’ve done so, it works, every time. Some days you see 10.5 as 11 and other days you see 10.5 as 10, over the long run this averages out to the correct value of 10.5.
For digital data there is a bitness and a voltage range, everything is in binary, but knowing the bitness (say 10-bit gives 1024 values over the selected voltage range) and voltage range you can convert fo FP. for every bit added you double the resolution, so 16-bit DAC gives you 65536 levels over the voltage range (the voltage range is selected to cover a known measurement range, the instrument is calibrated over the voltage range using known measurement values, fitted to the calibration curve, collect data, convert to engineering units, sampling frequency).
I’ve done all this EE stuff in the lab many a time, long ago.
As William suggests even one bit data can yield some useful information, for example water wave period, e. g. 000111000111000111…
Excel uses 16-bit FP, so whatever the raw data was originally, 16-bit FP will capture the raw data and even it’s underlying bitness (assuming that the engineering units conversion from the DAC process are recorded as is and the measurements are not highly non-linear over the measurement range).
Been there, done, that, wore out many a t-shirt.
But the process always starts as binary for modern day electronic DAC (it has to);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_acquisition
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>”Resigned? Do you have an IJIS bet this year?”
A couple with Neven and me were record by both IJIS extent and NSIDC September average in 2011, 2012 or 2013.
The NSIDC extent is now at 4.447 which is 35k below 2007’s 4.482 and 2011 4.549 for 1 September. For same day, this year is 595K and 809K below those years.
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MMM,
After awhile, you tend to look at things for what they are, not for what you personally might want them to be.
This is commonly referred to as an attempt at being agnostic..
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Oops,
Excel uses 64-bit precision (not 16-bit, my bad), or roughly 15 digits of significance. But it might not meet IEEE FP standards throughout.
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Crandles: Ah, that explains why Stoat is feeling resigned.
Still, the bet is for a September average and we’re not in September yet, and given that we humans do have a tendency to overextrapolate excursions from the trend (as we see at WUWT every time sea ice extent looks like it might reach somewhere near the 1980-2000 average) I think it would be esay to overestimate the chances that the September average record will be broken.
But, yeah, my instinct is would be a 70% chance or so of breaking the record given the current anomalously low extent.
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70%? Want to bet against a record at that? It is easy enough to calculate that only 1980 and 1987 changes in NSIDC extent would not lead to a record low (2 in 33 years). That is because in those years extent increased rapidly after their minimum which is less likely this year because area has been so low for the last three months building up heat in ocean which has to be lost before the freeze up starts in earnest.
Intrade has it at 89.1% to 90% which I think is still good value for most people to bet on a record (but probably not for me as I already have a $2060 exposure) but there is very little liquidity at those prices so little point in joining intrade for this.
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Sea ice in #Arctic Ocean is likely to shrink to record small size sometime next week, & then keep on melting, http://t.co/TnvTROIF
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Resigned is about the sunniest one can do on the hair on fire to lalala scale. This is not good news.
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“But why is Kloor pushing these idiots? ”
It sells. It’s better known as a sell-out. It’s so old it’s amazing the question’s even asked. Pick up on, and perpetuate, and regurgitate a conflict (a narrative) and you have news sales.
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@crandles:
“area has been so low for the last three months building up heat in ocean which has to be lost before the freeze up starts in earnest”
There are large areas outside of NSIDC ice extent which are in reality still 2/10 to 6/10 ice covered, far north and with SST at 0 °C. Those can refreeze easily just on a cold spell at mid-September.
However, it’s not very likely, given the warm Arctic around. And new ice will have to dry somewhat at the surface before the automatic analyses will recognize it. But refreeze isn’t generally delayed near the ice edge; it just moved farther north.
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When somebody refers to a “decade”, what sort of person interprets that as meaning “two years”?
I gave up on The Register years ago – it’s been an awful pile of trash ever since they started pushing their anti-science barrow.
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@Andreas
“There are large areas outside of NSIDC ice extent which are in reality still 2/10 to 6/10 ice covered, far north and with SST at 0 °C. Those can refreeze easily just on a cold spell at mid-September.”
Over 15% covered outside NSIDC’s 15% extent – sure I can believe there is bound to be some not picked up by passive microwave. But 6/10 covered? Four times more than detected, that sounds a lot.
SST at 0 °C – that would be about 1.5C above freezing point and that is a lot of heat to give up (especially if it goes deep) before refreeze would start. OK I suspect you meant at freezing point.
I suspect both supply and melting out of small pieces of ice in above freezing point water. After area minimum but before extent minimum, the pack starts refreezing while loose bits of ice melt out. Presumably the supply of small pieces dries up while the melting in above freezing point water continues. So by the time we get to extent minimum most of those loose undetected bits have melted away.
6/10 coverage after extent minimum c/would quickly refreeze but I doubt there will be any of that after the extent minimum unless the extent continues to plummet in which case September average extent would definitely be a record.
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4405156
Maybe two days more.The current definition of “very soon”
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William, I’m sorry, but I’m having fun arguing with Ben Pile to his own blog,
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/08/seymour-headlines.html#comment-84933
and it’s interesting to see Ben dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself as he goes on.
Now, as living in the US, I don’t know Ben Pile at all.
So, question : who is he, and why are his rants important enough to be mentioned in your post ?
[It doesn’t look like BP likes what you’re saying. As to who he is: I’ve no idea. The only ref I have is via KK, as I said. KK gains a point for some amusement, but loses several for ref’ing fools -W]
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IJIS Windsat has hit a record low (4.209 M Km^2 vs record 4.254 and that is ignoring dodgy last data point of 4.087).
So has NSIDC 4.089 M Km^2 (daily not monthly, record was 4.161). A bit hard to imagine extent shooting up to save the monthly average record when area is also still taking big chunks out of record; latest is 2.652 M Km^2 down from previous days 2.751 and record was 2.905. Quarter million gone from that record and still seems to be declining steeply…
(Combined a couple rather than spinning out torture too much. :o) )
[Ah, but that is just the daily not the monthly minimum. Not that there is much doubt that the monthly min will be broken too -W]
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William said : It doesn’t look like BP likes what you’re saying.
So it seems.
For the record, this is by post 55 :
——————————————-
Ben said :
A “typo” ? Who are you kidding, Ben ?
What are the odds of the word clueless being a “typo” of the word stupid, especially when you use that “typo” to accuse others for redacting using it.
Short of getting into definitions of what words mean, let’s look at what William actually accuses you of :
Now is the word “clueless” in this case “incivility” used by William ?
It would be if he did not have evidence for his claims. But the problem is that he DOES :
Laxon clearly points out that his research combines ICEsat and Cryosat measurements in his interview.
Now, since ICEsat transferred it’s last data on October 11, 2009, I think William has a point that you are “clueless” in thinking that “he presumed to mean since 2010”.
Now, do you want to discuss the other two words, “liars” and “idiots”, which YOU mentioned on William’s site ?
Or (more constructively) would you care to discuss science and observation of Arctic sea ice developments. as pointed in my post 52 ?
——————————————-
which Ben rapidly ‘redacted’ in it’s entirety for what Ben Pile calls ‘boring incivility’.
Ben, if you cannot discuss science because out of incompetence you declare that “it does not exist”, that’s one thing.
But if you accuse someone else of double standards, then don’t go around venting empty incivilities on other people’s blogs, then incorrectly blaming THEM for using the words they redact out, while simultaneously redacting legitimate arguments on your own blog. That is a double standard which simply does not look very good on you.
What a joke, this guy Ben Pile.
[Yes. I browsed a bit, but it doesn’t look like he has anything to say, so I stopped reading -W]
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William, do you have a list of the Arctic sea ice bets you have outstanding ? (including the one with crandles ?
Regarding our bet (the $10,000 one for 2016), I must tell you that I’m a bit shocked myself by the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice this summer. After the harsh winter in the West Arctic (unprecedented in satellite history), I really expected the West to hold back much more than it has. In fact, it seems that the West Arctic did not hold back at all (except for a few patches of ice that postponed Shell’s plans to start drilling in the Chukchi in July).
What is your opinion on the record breaking 2012 melting season (as well as the record breaking Greenland melt season) ? Do you think that the ‘trend’ just accellerated again, or is this just a temporary effect which can easily ‘recover’ next year ? If the latter, which weather conditions this season were beyond ‘average’ and thus could easily revert next season ?
As always, I appreciate and respect your opinion a lot.
[Thanks. For the bets, see cr’s next comment and the link to the old post. For my opinion on the 2012 season… I think I’ll wait a bit before venturing an opinion. I too have been surprised. And it seems unwise at this point to speak too early -W]
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Rob, in the Hobbes post, William provided link to https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/sea-ice-part-2/
So 1.
“if I’ve understood correctly we are betting €50 that either 2011, 2012 or 2013 will beat the minimum extent record of 2007, based on daily IJIS SIE numbers (which makes it more fun), but the record has to be confirmed by the monthly NSIDC extent number (which is a great idea, because if the daily minimum extent record is broken, we’ll have extra fun waiting for the final NSIDC number to roll in).”
Neven 50 Euro, crandles on same terms £100
2,3,&4
Crandles offers 3 separate bets on the average of [2012, 2013 and 2014] (to be above/below 4.294, I take the high side), of [2013, 2014 and 2015] (4.119, ditto) and of [2014, 2015 and 2016] (3.94, ditto)
£100 each
https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2011/06/26/betting-on-sea-ice-10000/
is where I upped the 4 bets to £100 each.
5.
“If in 2016, sea ice extent is above the green line, WMC wins $10,000. If it is below the red line, RD wins $10,000. If it is in between, the bet is null and void.”
“Green line is trend-to-year-using-all-data; so the 2011 point is the first extrapolated, and so on. Blue-dash is the trend, using last-10-years. And purple-dash is the same, but excluding 2007 (on the 2007-was-weird-theory; I’m not actually using that line). Red is the LS/Crandles exponential fit.”
LS really means LH=Larry Hamilton
While I don’t remember any other bets, it is entirely possible I have forgotten. In which case maybe William will fill us in.
[That’s what I recall (though I’d forgotten I had £100 with you on this year’s min as well as Neven. As I say, I’ll drag this out to the monthly min, because there is no hurry -W]
[ps: what is all this fuckwittery that Intrade are going through re me sending them my passport? -W]
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Just to note the obvious, which is that the monthly NSIDC figure could yet save William’s butt if there’s a fast re-freeze underway by mid-September. Probably it would have been better to use a rolling 30-day average of the dailies. But it still seems likely that the September monthly will confirm even if something like that happens.
[There’s a cheery thought for me. There’s hope yet! -W]
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Rob Dekker:
Pile is one of the Spiked crowd that a couple of commenters mentioned up-thread.
they’re a pretty weird bunch — they emerged from the ashes of the Revolutionary Communist Party, but are pretty much at the most batcrap mental end of right-wing libertarianism. though i’m not entirely clear how much of that is serious, and how much is attention-seeking, since their position often seem to be little more than “we’ll provide 1000 contrarian but intellectual-sounding words to any editor who expresses an interest”.
this piece, published a couple of years ago in the London Review of Books, gives quite a nice overview: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they
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Rob and Wm. The problem is that a single year would do damn all to rebuild the Arctic ice sheet in the summers. Poof, first year ice is gone. Several years of below the current average melt would be needed.
Best
Eli
[This is indeed a known aspect of the situation, and one I plan to think about -W]
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@ligne, Thanks for the link, very interesting. I loved the remark about about “foisting poor quality toilets on our global peers.”
[I liked that too. Can you imagine the trembling that will foster? “The most feared empire the world has ever known. They dominated the peasants with their powerful but poor-quality toilets” -W]
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ligne, thanks for the link.
If every anti-science libertarian in the UK shoots himself in the foot as often as Ben Pile does, then you guys have little to worry about in the UK. Here in the US, right-wing anti-science extremism is a lot more serious than that… In fact, they dominate Congress already and are spending $ 1 billion in smear campaigns so they can take over all of US government.
You guys are lucky that science in the UK is still an uncontested part of free speech.
[In the UK the env isn’t really terribly party-pol, in that both sides are keen to have env credentials. In this I think they are following the voters. I don’t really know why, in the US, you’re so split -W]
Eli, whatever happened to the Monnett case ? Did the DOI finally published their report and apologized to this scientist who was interrogated by special agents from the DOI Inspector General for publishing an observation of drowned polar bears and suggesting that further retreat of Arctic sea ice would likely make such occurrences more common ?
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I’ve noticed that plots from my old website (gfspl.rootnode.net) was cited here:
https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/sea-ice-pic/
This website was moved and Arctic ice pics are currently here:
http://meteomodel.pl/index.php/arcticice
Temperatures for Arctic (66N,80N – ERA Interim) can be found here:
http://meteomodel.pl/index.php/temperatury-w-arktyce-tabele
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[In the UK … both sides are keen to have env credentials…. following the voters. I don’t really know why, in the US, you’re so split -W]
What? leave all that fossil fuel to burn up in the final days after the Rapture? Godly people will use it to run their SUVs and air conditioners and such.
You heard about Occam? Sad end; he cut his throat shaving.
I’ve been wondering why none of the big US auto manufacturers incorporate Rapture Switches as options in their vehicles — a seat sensor that puts the car in shutdown mode if the driver’s seat is suddenly unoccupied while the vehicle is in motion.
Of course it don’t matter, by definition noody God wanted would be in the way when the vehicle runs away.
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[In the UK … both sides are keen to have env credentials…. following the voters. I don’t really know why, in the US, you’re so split -W]
There has always been some liberal bias among the environmentalist community, especially since the favored tool of environmental protection is regulation by the government. Serious environmentalists were usually liberal and often Democrats.
The Republican Party recognized this and slowly started to completely pull back the lukewarm support they had for the environment. They were careful about it at first, because things like clean air, safe drinking water and public parks are things that the public generally likes.
Now that the right in the US has been completely radicalized, there is open hostility to environmental protection. Its constant messages, i.e. “job killing regulation” are almost required to be repeated and accepted by Republican politicians. These messages are also repeated by Republican media outlets and advocacy groups to sway the voters.
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Speaking of “foisting poor quality toilets on our global peers”, one of my all-time favorite newspaper headlines (repeated in one of the books of such things published by the Columbia Journalism Review) was ” Columnist Gets Urologist in Trouble with his Peers”.
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Yeah, it was about a 20 year campaign (main phase, anyway) starting in the mid-70s, organized through a non-profit “think tank” network in part piggybacking on an existing multi-issue effort (see the “Powell memo” here).
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>”[ps: what is all this fuckwittery that Intrade are going through re me sending them my passport? -W]”
From FAQ:
“Why do I need to provide this documentation?
Under the anti-money laundering regulations contained Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act of 2010, Intrade is now legally obligated to know more about our customers. To comply with the customer due diligence requirements set out in the Act we have to ask for your ID and proof of address. We understand this process is a hassle but it is legal requirement. ”
Notes: 1. It would seem that if you are not a customer, you don’t need to do it. (They are only threatening to suspend account and if there is no money there then no harm is being threatened.)
2. 2010 Act – perhaps they are a bit slow asking for ID and proof of address.
3. Terms and conditions on opening account have always said you may have to provide ID.
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Intrade have opened NSIDC average September Extent less than 4M Km^2 and less than 3.7M Km^2 markets
[I feel that Intrade have effectively stolen my money. All of a sudden, with no warning, I can’t get back the money I put in. I don’t really want to upload copies of my passport to websites of unknown probity. And the amount (~$200) isn’t large enough for me to care much.
I was looking for something interesting to throw the last of the balance at. Then I either lose it and don’t have to care, or make the amount large enough to care. Perhaps Sept ice will do -W]
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There’s an outstanting bet with me as well, though neither of us is in danger of losing for a while:
https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/sea-ice-part-2/
“Another multi-year bet was Peter Ellis who says Allowing myself a reasonably wide fluff margin, like you’re doing, I’m prepared to bet £50 that the September monthly average will go below 2 million some time between now and the end of 2016. Bet voided if there’s one or more Pinatubo-scale eruptions between now and then. That looks OK; accepted.”
[Anything attached to that post should not get forgotten. I’ll do a season round-up once the September monthly average is in -W]
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Quick question on Arctic ice trends: Just from eyeballing the curves is looks like the lower the minimum, the later it occurs. Is this part of the accepted wisdom? I’m not a cryo guy but can talk myself into thinking it makes sense.
[I’m not aware of it being part of the wisdom. Or even true, looking at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent_prev.htm and 2011 -W]
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Doesn’t really suggest any trend in minimum date though there is a trend in extent.
In fact oven on Nevens we have discussed the reverse. If the extent decreases so the ice edges retreat northwards then the sun will cease warming those locations earlier so you might get an earlier minimum.
Whether there is likely to be much heat built up in the ocean at the minimum extent edge to cause delay to onset of melting seems not much different to situation in prior years i.e. not particularly likely unless weather has intervened with ekman pumping bringing warmer water towards surface. Such weather seems likely to be noise rather than trend though it is possible we will get more intense lows and more ekman pumping.
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At $200, I guess one should care more about identity theft than the money. Though from the post it seems you have trusted them with more than $200. Better get your bets in before 31 Aug when they will suspend account.
An alternative might be to pay off some of my bets. I believe there is a cost free transfer to other accounts option but they insist on ID confirmation before they will do such a withdrawal.
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This is really good – watch out for the climate elves
http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/monckton-will-help.html
[I saw it first on Denial Depot: http://denialdepot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/arctic-sea-ice-downfall.html -W]
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Just realised I missed out the ‘may’ in
but they *may* insist on ID confirmation before they will do such a withdrawal.
Oops sorry about that.
Last day to try to find out is today.
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[Burrowed as spam. You’ve already made the same mistakes at https://wmconnolley.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/arctic-collapse-dramatically-increases-global-warming/ -W]
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