Trivialities like facts? You were wrong (a little wrong then, very wrong now) about the ice extent, having uncritically accepted whichever estimates suite your biases.
Posted on 08/19/2009 9:18:33 AM PDT by ClimateDepot.com
Navy Chemist Trashes New York Times for 'Continuously regurgitating fear-mongering, anecdotal clap trap of global warming propagandists'
'Your coverage of the climate issues is a reflection of either extreme negligence or simply scientific illiteracy'
Guest Essay By Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired U.S. Navy meteorologist with a PhD in physical chemistry. Hertzberg is featured on page 174 of the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of More Than 700 Dissenting Scientists on Global Warming.
Dr. Hertzberg's August 19, 2009 Letter To The New York Times is Reprinted Below:
Distortions and misrepresentations of your coverage of global warming/climate change
I am a scientist who has studies the theory of human caused global warming for over 20 years, and it is both saddening and offensive to me as a scientist to see the Times continuously regurgitating the fear-mongering, anecdotal clap trap it is being fed by know-nothing environmentalists and global warming propagandists in the Gore-IPCC-Hansen camp. As an example, consider the latest article in today's Times by Cornelia Dean and her regurgitation from NOAA's Climate Change Center:
"The agency also said that, on average, Arctic sea ice covered 3.4 million square miles in July, 12.7 percent below the 1979-2000 average and the third lowest on record after 2007 and 2006".
That description is a distortion and a complete misrepresentation of the actual data. For your benefit, I have attached the comprehensive, latest data record from Ole Humlum's web site under the heading of "Climate4you June 2009." From the data on page 11 of that site, one obtains the following record for ice coverage for the months of July from 2002 until 2009 (after converting square kilometers to square miles):
July of the year shown below Arctic Ice Coverage - Million square miles: 2002 3.3 2003 3.2 2004 3.5 2005 3.3 2006 3.4 2007 3.3 2008 3.2 2009 3.4
As the above table shows and as the graph from the "Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency" on p11 shows, there is nothing dramatic in the data.
NOAA's statement which claims a July 2009 ice coverage that is "12.7 percent below the 1979-2007 average" is the fraudulent comparison of a summer month ice coverage with a yearly average. All summer ice coverages for every year are markedly below their yearly average. The data show a 4 % decline in the yearly average Arctic ice cover from 2002 to 2007, and a 3 % increase in Arctic ice cover from 2007 to today.
If you look at the data shown for average atmospheric temperature shown earlier in the collection of data, it shows a significant decrease during the last decade or so. Data for sea level rise shown for the last 20 years or so, show a rate of rise that is about the same as it has been for the last 13,000 years, from when the land bridge between Alaska and Siberia began to flood as we transitioned from the last "Ice Age" to the current Interglacial Warming.
Your coverage of the issue of Global Warming / Climate change is a reflection of either extreme negligence or simply scientific illiteracy.
It reminds me of the way your reporters such as Judith Miller simply regurgitated the Bush Administration's fear mongering clap trap about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. You helped enable the Bush Administration in its disastrous invasion of Iraq without bothering to independently investigate the facts. You are now enabling the Gore-IPCC-Hansen fear mongers in the same way. The Waxman-Markey legislation for a "cap and trade" program, based on fraudulent science, has the potential to be as damaging to the Nation's economy as the Iraq war was to both our economy and our international reputation.
Is it too much to ask for the Times to diligently research the facts before simply regurgitating the propaganda it is fed?
The most egregious recent example on this issue is the article you published a few days ago on "Climate Change as a National Security". Not only was it based on the false premise that human activity is causing climate change, but you added insult to injury by publishing only those letters to the editor that commented favorably on that absurdity.
Attached is a series of web sites of "global warming skeptic/realists" like myself. The Oregon Petition has been signed by over 30,000 scientists like myself. Also attached is a talk of mine entitled "The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide" and a recent paper that appeared in Energy and Environment.
The latter can be simply summarized by paraphrasing the former President Clinton: "It's the clouds, stupid!". The so-called "greenhouse effect" was shown to be devoid of physical reality as early as 1909. If you or your science editor, or Friedman, or anyone else on your staff is really interested in the truth, I would be glad to provide you with the appropriate publications and proofs.
You, the House of Representatives, the President's Science Adviser, and his Secretary of Energy have been duped by the "Fraud of the Century"! I can only hope that any proposed legislation on this issue will die its well-deserved death in the Senate. But if it does, it will be for the wrong reason: not because of its phony science but because of its damaging economic impacts. The only sensible thing you have done recently was to publish the article in the Magazine section about Prof. Freeman Dyson's skepticism on the subject. But his skepticism was based on generalizations and his scientific intuition. There are abundant facts and scientific data that conclusively prove that the theory of human caused global warming is completely false. My attachments contain but the "tip of the iceberg" for those proofs.
I can only hope that my effort in composing this e-mail will not have been a complete waste of my time.
Sincerely,
Dr. Martin Hertzberg Copper Mountain, CO 80443
It's "game over" for the "global warming" scumbags. From the very beginning they never had any science to support their con job, and now that real scientists are debunking their fabricated nonsense all around the globe, and their work is getting widespread exposure, even the slowest simpletons are catching on.
If you want to catch up on the issue yourself, go my FR homepage and scroll down. There are a bunch of links to help you do some homework and get a start on educating yourself on the subject.
Don't be dupe of the global socialists.
...You're welcome!
FRegards,
LH
Only one of your links has significant scientific content. The rest are chaff.
I wasn't really back. I was just posting to the moron with the FReeper nick "ClimateDepot.com". You got in the way, and you're echoing his emptiness.
I don't bother with trivialities anymore.
You obviously don't have much use for facts, either.
Trivialities like facts? You were wrong (a little wrong then, very wrong now) about the ice extent, having uncritically accepted whichever estimates suite your biases.
You will have to reacquaint me with the statement that I made which was "a little wrong then, very wrong now". I searched on 'cogitator' with 'sea ice' and couldn't find something that was clearly wrong about sea ice extent, so you'll have to show me.
I don't dispute that this year is holding on to a little more ice than the last two.
Global Warming on the rocks....ping
THANKS, BFL
From http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2014827/posts?page=44#44 (may 2008)
Turns out your "actual scientific experts" were wrong. And from early this year:
I think Gore was a bit bold (for anybody reading, he's predicting the disappearance of the polar ice cap in SUMMER in five years), but I think that every following summer we are going to see a new minimum sea ice extent and volume, or values very close to the minimum, as happened this year.
from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2167349/posts?page=29#29 (jan 2009)
I will gladly admit that I glom onto the opposite in scientific hypotheses than you. And if someone predicts a decrease in ice for 2010, I will read their rationale and look for the koolaid stains. The only guarantee is that one of us will be wrong every year, perhaps it's my turn next year.
......Willful distortions. ......
There are layers. The actual author is ignorant. The editors use the ignorance to willfully distort the debate.
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As a note, there are some actual scientific experts who expect that Arctic sea ice summer minimum to get close to, or surpass, the 2007 minimum, despite the cool La Nina year conditions thus far. The reason is the marked loss of multi-year ice that happened last year.
and
but I think that every following summer we are going to see a new minimum sea ice extent and volume, or values very close to the minimum, as happened this year.
When I assess that the sea ice minimum extents for 2008 and 2009 have only been surpassed by 2007 (thank you for the illustrative data on that point), then "close to" or "close to the minimum" is hard to construe as an incorrect statement. I'm acquainted with the concept of interannual variability -- as well as the unreliability of short-term predictions for a multidimensional system.
And I'm sure you've read this:
Satellites and Submarines Give the Skinny on Sea Ice Thickness
"To extend the record, Kwok and Drew Rothrock of the University of Washington, Seattle, recently combined the high spatial coverage from satellites with a longer record from Cold War submarines to piece together a history of ice thickness that spans close to 50 years. Analysis of the new record shows that since a peak in 1980, sea ice thickness has declined 53 percent. "It's an astonishing number," Kwok said. The study, published online August 6 in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that the current thinning of Arctic sea ice has actually been going on for quite some time."
as well as
"In 2008, Kwok and colleagues used ICESat to produce an ice thickness map over the entire Arctic basin. Then in July 2009, Kwok and colleagues reported that multiyear 'permanent' ice in the Arctic Ocean has thinned by more than 40 percent since 2004. For the first time, thin seasonal ice has overtaken thick older ice as the dominant type."
If I think this research might have a modicum of truth value to it, am I again guilty of uncritically accepting another estimate that merely suites my biases?
You know what, maybe I am. Unless JPL makes the actual article available for free, I probably won't be able to read the actual paper for a couple of weeks. So I included ClimateDepot.com for this reply. He's good at finding rebuttal articles. Maybe he could post a link to one here to keep us fair and balanced.
"He's intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking."
Analysis of the new record shows that since a peak in 1980, sea ice thickness has declined 53 percent. "It's an astonishing number," Kwok said.
It's even more astonishing that the ice increased from the 1940's through the 1970's. Or maybe not so astonishing:
As usual the current decadal decrease (and current yearly increase) is mostly a function of natural variability.
well thanks for coming back and gracing us with your presence. You can go back to the koolaid forum now. Making any progress over there with your "conservative" solutions to AGW?
Sorry. Science Daily didn't have polar bears. I went to the source. JPL added the polar bears, I guess.
It's even more astonishing that the ice increased from the 1940's through the 1970's. Or maybe not so astonishing:
I assume that because sea ice extent was relatively constant up until the 80s, sea ice volume and sea ice thickness probably were, too. It's basically impossible to find out if that's true or not.
The way I see it, either this mostly natural variability, in which case we have about an even chance of it getting cool enough for the ice to add volume over the next few years, or it's being forced primarily in one direction, in which case the odds of continuing to lose ice volume over time are higher than the odds of continuing to add ice volume over time. It certainly won't surprise you to find out that I think this isn't all natural variability and we're headed in the warming direction. I'm sorry if that makes you classify me as a koolaid drinker, but that continues to be how I interpret the scientific results. As I've noted numerous times before, it would be wonderful indeed if the mainstream scientific viewpoint on this issue is wrong. I literally hope that they and I are wrong. But I cannot realistically believe that the science is wrong and that therefore I'm wrong.
However, I will definitely grant the possibility that the Sun is behaving peculiarly, and if that persists, that might cause some interesting effects. I still think that despite a quiet Sun it's possible to set a new global surface temperature record -- this year could seriously test that possibility. Out of curiousity, what do you think that would mean? What would it do to this "decade of cooling" concept that is so skeptically popular?
Can't resist quoting Patrick Michaels at this point: "Michaels pointed out that the surface records show average global temperatures increasing at a steady rate of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade since 1977. He also hastened to put the kibosh on recent assertions that "global warming stopped in 1998." While global average temperatures have been essentially flat since 1998, Michaels argued that natural variations in the climate mask any increases due to greenhouse gases. In particular, cooler waters in the Pacific ("La Nina") and lower solar activity have conspired to drop average global temperatures. When these trends reverse, average global temperatures will rapidly rise to reveal the established long term man-made warming trend of +0.17 degrees centigrade per decade." (This was from the International Conference on Climate Change a year ago, as described by Ronald Bailey.)
Is Michaels drinking the koolaid too?
You can go back to the koolaid forum now. Making any progress over there with your "conservative" solutions to AGW?
Forgive me for not having any idea of what you're talking about here.
I'll end on this note:
Source: Cryosphere Today
Do you also accept a similar (but not the same as Mann's Hockey stick) the prominent graphic that Algore uses in his movie? (It may be referred to as Dr Thompson's Thermometer graph?)
Source: Cryosphere TodayFrom the graph posted in #34 above, it looks like the trend has turned around ... no?
Post #34
In any case, this was in the news just today (?):
NOAA Summer Temperature Below Average for U.S.
www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090910_summerstats.html
And, as we all should know, "weather, not climate". Integrate enough of this 'weather' over time, and you have climate.
BTW, how close are we to *any* of the several James Hansen 1998 model 'predictions' due to the continued increase in CO2?
The worst case? The best case? ???
Has he tropsphere in the troics shown any warming?
Have the poles showed any warming?
Where was it the AGW crowd SAID the signs would show up first? It's been 11 years since 1998 ... we should be able to address some of these points by now ...
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/arctic.historical.seaice.doc.txt
Sea ice extent data is provided by Kelly, et. al. 1988. The ice extent data is compiled for the months April-August for the majority of the period 1901-1956.
The Kelly 1988 data comes from the Walsh 1978 data
http://gcmd.nasa.gov/records/GCMD_WALSH_CHAPMAN_SEAICE.html
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g00799_arctic_southern_sea_ice/index.html
1871-1900: A monthly climatology based on Walsh data for 1901-1930 was used, to which spatial variability was added using a 1979-1996 passive microwave bias corrected data set. A climatology based on the passive microwave data defined typical monthly concentrations. Where Walsh data grid cells had concentrations of 100%, and the passive microwave climatology showed concentrations of at least 90%, the climatological concentration was substituted.
1901-1978: Primarily the Walsh data set, with spatial variability added as above. Note that U.S. National Ice Center (NIC) charts weigh heavily in the Walsh data beginning in 1973.
In contrast
Here's some real world measurements from the Russian side of the Arctic taken from published papers explaining those measurements:
Russian historical records of arctic sea-ice extent and thickness extend back to the beginning of the 20th century. There are several distinct periods in the history of Russian sea-ice observations. Occasional ship observations of summer ice edge started in the first decade of the 1900s when the first Russian hydrographic surveys and commercial shipping routes along the Siberian coast began. These data have been analyzed by the Russian climatologist Vize (1944). Some data for this period have also been obtained from Russian navigation books. Starting in 1929, when the Soviet Polar Aircraft Fleet was created, aircraft-based observations began, which improved the quality of the data substantially. However, systematic aircraft and ship observations of sea ice from the Kara Sea through the Chukchi Sea began only in 1932, when the Northern Sea Route was created. There were information gaps during World War II (1942-45). The missing data have been reconstructed using statistical (regression-like) models relating atmospheric processes (SLP gradients and SAT) to ice extent (Kovalev and Nikolaev 1976; Yulin 1990). Aircraft ice-edge observations continued until 1979, when the satellite era began, but until recently a combination of satellite and aircraft summer ice-edge observations was used. Since 1990 all ice-extent observations have been satellite-based.
The choice is between hockey stick ice from a temperature-based model of theoretical ice extent, or non-hockey-stick real world measurements of the actual ice extent.
says
"These data are a compilation of data from many sources integrated into a single gridded product by John Walsh and Bill Chapman, University of Illinois. The sources of data for each grid cell have changed over the years from infrequent land/sea observations, to observationally derived charts, to satellite data for the most recent decades. Temporal and spatial gaps within observed data are filled with a climatology or other statistically derived data."
Your reference says:
"The missing data have been reconstructed using statistical (regression-like) models relating atmospheric processes (SLP gradients and SAT) to ice extent (Kovalev and Nikolaev 1976; Yulin 1990)."
The choice is between hockey stick ice from a temperature-based model of theoretical ice extent, or non-hockey-stick real world measurements of the actual ice extent.
Seems like both groups had to resort to using models to fill data gaps.
By the way, what are the units on those figures?
And, as we all should know, "weather, not climate". Integrate enough of this 'weather' over time, and you have climate.
Indeed.
BTW, how close are we to *any* of the several James Hansen 1998 model 'predictions' due to the continued increase in CO2?
Your question is too broad to be answerable.
The issue was handled well by the NRC.
Do you also accept a similar (but not the same as Mann's Hockey stick) the prominent graphic that Algore uses in his movie? (It may be referred to as Dr Thompson's Thermometer graph?)
Al Gore and Dr Thompson's thermometer
Thanks for asking.
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