Deniers Will Just Scream, "El Niño!"

Deniers will simply scream, "El Niño!" in response to this observation, implying it's the only cause, and that El Niño is somehow magically immune to being affected by a global warming trend.

The ‘ridiculously’ warm Arctic just set an ominous new record https://t.co/sWSfmvDOwu

— Skeptical Inquirer (@SkeptInquiry) March 4, 2016

And of course this observation only takes into account Arctic sea ice extent, not thickness or volume, which is a more reliable gauge of climate change at the North Pole, and often a more depressing figure, unfortunately. Fact of the matter is, the Arctic loses about 3 million Empire State Buildings or two-thirds to three-quarters a Mt. Everest worth of sea ice volume every decade.

Record Antarctic Sea Ice Extent Still Only Proves One Thing

"Some people have looked at the Antarctic increasing trend, and used that to suggest that global warming isn't happening, or that the increase in the Antarctic is offsetting the decrease in the Arctic, and that's simply not true. If you look at just simply the magnitude of the changes we're seeing in the wintertime, the Arctic is decreasing about twice as fast as what the Antarctic is increasing."

- Dr. Walt Meier, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

This year's sea ice extent in Antarctica does not change the fact that the Earth is heating up due to our emissions, but it does prove one thing. You can post a video and an article from NASA/Goddard which plainly and simply contrast and put in clear perspective conditions at opposite ends of the planet, and which provide several reasonable explanations for the minimal sea ice expansion at one pole relative to the larger loss at the other (all in complete harmony with a warming world, mind), and none of it will manage to penetrate the impregnably thick skulls of the deniers who flock to your strange site (scroll down to the comment section, and commence to facepalming). Not one bit. Zilcho. Nada. Nothing.

Oh, brother.

Steven Goddard Relies on Al Gore for His Arctic Information

Most intelligent people interested in the real story of what's going on up in the Arctic due to climate change visit sources like the NSIDC and PIOMAS, or sites that use their data. That's how you get a clear and well-evidenced picture of the disturbing ice loss trend over the past few decades due to our greenhouse gas emissions.







Steven Goddard, however, trusts to his own interpretation of Al Gore's words, so he had the strange idea in his mostly empty head that the Arctic would be ice-free this year. Weird, because I thought that, despite being smitten, climate change deniers like Goddard were against what Al Gore had to say — you know, because he's fat and rich and all that deep and important stuff — and would therefore dismiss his opinion. Nope, turns out hopelessly confused trolls like Goddard are so hopelessly confused that they rely on Grandpa Al for predictions about the Arctic, and are astounded when they turn out to be untrue and more scientifically-accurate sources tell the real story.

Then again, who am I fooling? I mean, these screwball denier trolls have only had about half a decade to figure what Gore was really saying and what prompted it, but, surprise, surprise, they failed to do so.

Maslowski is on the record stating he thought it possible that we'd lose all summer ice cover in the Arctic by 2013. Let's do some math. That is 3.5 years from now. Gore said 75% chance in 5 to 7 years based apparently on personal conversations with Maslowski. You know what? Gore's statement was a conservative estimate relative to what I found Maslowski has said on the record.

Shocking that Goddard and crew are so embarrassingly lost, I know.

Way to Go, Canada

Image source.

Hopefully, you are aware that my post title is intended as sarcasm, and of the growing concern that the Canadian government is muzzling its researchers. Also, that it allegedly short-circuited a press conference two years ago by Canadian scientists who wanted to report the record 2012 Arctic sea ice minimum. Since then, there has been some absurd excuse-making and guesswork over whether or not this was intentional or just plain ole bureaucratic inertia.

If the Harper government did indeed squelch this press conference, it had plenty of political reason to do so, since it would inevitably have been spun into "Harper fiddles while Santa’s workshop sinks due to man-made climate change." This wouldn’t have been true. Nor would it have justified the kind of draconian policies that Mr. Harper has so far avoided.

Well, we now have some fairly damning evidence that the cancellation was purposeful.

Federal scientists who keep a close eye on the Arctic ice would like to routinely brief Canadians about extraordinary events unfolding in the North.

But newly released federal documents show the Harper government has been thwarting their efforts...

The briefing never happened. Nine levels of approval — from the director of the ice service up to the environment minister’s office — were needed for the "communication plan," according to the documents released to Postmedia News under the Access to Information Act.

"Ministerial services" — the sixth layer — cancelled the briefing, the documents say. And the ice service scientists ended up watching as the Canadian media and public got most of their information from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), where scientists were quick to give interviews, hold briefings and issue press releases as the ice shattered records as it melted from Baffin Island to the Beaufort Sea.

Observers say the case is further evidence of the way the Conservative government is silencing scientists.

"It’s suppression through bureaucracy," said Katie Gibbs, executive director of Evidence for Democracy (E4D), an Ottawa-based non-profit pushing for open communication of government science.

"Why is it that we need nine levels of approval for this sort of thing, what’s the justification," said biologist Scott Findlay, a co-founder of E4D and member of the Institute for Science, Society and Policy at the University of Ottawa.

He said the government’s "Byzantine message control" is not only wasting time, money and resources, but having a “corrosive” effect on the public service.

Do I even need to mention how unacceptable this is, my Canadian friends? Is it not bad enough that we have idiotic and/or devious deniers misrepresenting the climate science that does get out? Now we have to put up with the science being censored before it can even be disseminated and then willfully mangled by the pseudoscience-loving denier chuckle patch? What is this the geeeeeyawddamn 14th or 15th century all over again?

And let me just make a preemptive strike against complaints that I am unfairly linking all Canadians to the actions of a conservative government. Ummm, you did vote Harper into office, no? Also, it's not like shit like this hasn't happened before. Besides, I am no more lenient with my fellow Americans for electing anti-science/information Bush, and for being a bunch of ignorant fools. So, north and south of the border, if you don't like the criticism, you can all just get over it already, and start bringing your brain with you when you head for the voting booth, and when the pollsters come around as well. We can't put these clowns in office, then try to distance ourselves from their actions, act like we are all so perfectly innocent, and like we played no part. Doesn't work that way.

Steven Goddard, the Sad, Sad, Little Troll, Part 2

Steven Goddard, Nitpicking Denier P. I.

"Two years ago, I caught NSIDC pulling a fast one in their sea ice graphs. A few hours before the Arctic extent line was about to cross the 1979-2000 mean line, they changed their plotting scheme to use a five day trailing average for the current ice and a nine day trailing average for the climatology. This moved the extent line away from the mean line, and narrowly avoided the immediate death of the death spiral.

I pointed out to them they can’t do that because it puts a two day relative shift in the data – and after arguing with me about it they admitted they can’t do that and fixed it the next day."

He caught them pulling a fast one, and told them they couldn't do that, dontchya know?

Some actual references/correspondences showing that this back-and-forth really happened, rather than his hearsay assertion two years later, would be nice (no, I'm not doing him the favor of scouring his archives), but let's cue up the hotshot private investigator music for him, anyway...



Too bad he couldn't catch the Arctic pulling a fast one back in 2012 before it decided to set a sea ice minimum record. But I guess if Steven Goddard, Nitpicking Denier P. I., weren't on the job policing the NSIDC, the Arctic would have tried to get away with even less sea ice that year, ya know?

How Many Empire State Buildings Does the Arctic Lose Each Decade?

Image source.

Right around this time last year, we started hearing an awful lot of crowing from deniers about Arctic sea ice extent making some record recovery they dreamed up. It's really difficult for me to understand how the 6th lowest minimum on record is something to celebrate, even if you pretend the climate isn't changing at all and/or due to our emissions. I mean, I know deniers are screwballs and everything, but I thought maybe they'd at least have enough common sense not to intentionally defeat their own ignorant purposes by trumpeting the sixth lowest minimum like it proves the planet stopped warming or something.

Obviously, they try to cherry-pick the ice conditions at either pole which suit their strange denial-fest, and the challenge appears a bit beyond them anymore. They have to pretend the realities of the downward trend in global sea ice extent don't exist, and stick their fingers in their ears especially aggressively over the volume of land and sea ice lost in the Arctic and Antarctic annually. Volume, to my mind, is a much better gauge of the effects of global warming, because ice can spread thin, have greater coverage (extent), and look like it's increasing overall due to many factors, some of which are caused by climate change itself (scroll down to the "Antarctica’s positive trend in sea ice extent" section of this NSIDC link for further explanation).

Personally, I try to pay more attention to volume data, and here's what sea ice volume has been doing in the Arctic for the past 35 years or so:



Look at the "Anomaly Trend" figure in the lower left of that image. 3,000 km^3 +/- 1,000 km^3 lost every decade. Approximately three thousand cubic kilometers of ice vanishes every ten years. That's three trillion cubic meters. To give you some perspective, the Empire State building is about 1 million cubic meters in volume, so the Arctic loses 3 million Empire State Buildings worth of sea ice each decade, or three hundred thousand per year.

To further illustrate how much ice goes missing, let's very roughly approximate the volume of Mt. Everest using the formula for the volume of a cone (I did say very roughly):

3.1416 * 22km^2 * (9km/3) = 4561.59 km^3

The Arctic loses around two-thirds to three-quarters a Mt. Everest worth of sea ice every ten years.

Arctic Sea Ice Extent on Google Earth

Similar things have been done before, certainly, but I added some trend data/graphs at the end of the video for perspective. Oh, and Meniscus for ear candy. :)