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02/19/2009

The 2008 weblog awards winner for Best Science Blog
http://wattsupwiththat.com/

NSIDC: satellite sea ice sensor has “catastrophic failure” - data faulty for the last 45 or more days (”Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check in the coming days. ...it became clear that there was a significant problem - sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean. ...”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/18/nsidc-satellite-sea-ice-sensor-has-catastrophic-failure-data-faulty-for-the-last-45-days/#comments

Click for larger image [at above link]

Today NSIDC announced they had discovered the reason why. The sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite they use had degraded and now apparently failed to the point of being unusable. Compounding the bad news they discovered it had been in slow decline for almost two months, which caused a bias in the arctic sea ice data that underestimated the total sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers. This will likely affect the January NSIDC sea ice totals. .... [snip]

John Egan (22:29:11) asks :

Will NSIDC issue a correction to the media?

“Arctic sea ice coverage was at its sixth lowest January extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Average ice extent during January was 5.43 million square miles.”

This was released in a number of news outlets -
http://www.examiner.com/x-219-Denver-Weather-Examiner~y2009m2d18-January-was-seventh-warmest-for-globe
And was also part of the larger NOAA January report -
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090218_globalstats.html
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William Schlesinger on IPCC: “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.”
17 02 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/17/william-schlesinger-on-ipcc-something-on-the-order-of-20-percent-have-had-some-dealing-with-climate/

This is a bit disturbing, though in retrospect, not surprising. One of our local IPCC wonks at Chico State University, Jeff Price, is a biologist, but lectures me about climate all the same. - Anthony

by Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

I had intended to return to this point when I originally posted about this debate last week, but time got away from me. Thankfully, my colleague Roy Cordato brought it up today:

During the question and answer session of last week?s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of United Nation?s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist.

Picture: http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/10/13/Rajendra_Pachauri_wideweb__470x317,0.jpg
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC - trained initially as a railway engineer

This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position. His answer was quite telling.

First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had ?some dealing with the climate.? His complete answer was that he thought, ?something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.? In other words, even IPCC worshiper Schlesinger now acknowledges that 80 percent of the IPCC membership had absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.

This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority.