Arctic sea ice continued its stonking recovery last month, recording its 24th highest level in the 45-year modern satellite record. As reported previously in the Daily Sceptic, the ice climbed to a 21-year high on January 8th. Good news, of course, for ice fans and polar bears, but frankly a bit of a disaster if you are forecasting future summer swimming galas at the North Pole to promote a collectivist Net Zero agenda. Live by the sword, die by the sword – if you cherry-pick the scientific record to state the climate is collapsing, it might be thought you have some explaining to do when the trend reverts to the norm. Just ask coral alarmists about two years of record growth on the Great Barrier Reef. Sadly, explanations there are none, just a deafening, stunned silence.
Arctic sea ice has long been a poster scare for climate Armageddon. But science tells us that it is cyclical and is heavily influenced by ocean currents and atmospheric heat exchanges. It would appear that these chaotic changes are beyond the ability of any computer to process, although a large, well-funded model industry begs to differ. The recovery in Arctic sea ice has been steady if slow and this has enabled the alarums to hang on in the mainstream headlines. Of course it could go into reverse, nobody really knows, least of all Sir David Attenborough who told BBC viewers in 2022 that the summer ice could all be gone by 2035. He relied, needless to say, on a computer model.
Most mainstream climate journalists just print what they are told without looking too closely at the source of the information. The U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) is a source of interpretation for trends in polar ice, but care needs to be taken when reading its often gloomy monthly summaries. According to the NSIDC, January sea ice growth was “lower than average” throughout most of the month. It headlined its report: ‘Nothing swift about January sea ice.’ Other interpretations are available. Consider the graph below tracking the ice extent for January over the satellite record.
Statisticians can argue over when the sea ice started to recover but there has not been much decline going back to around 2007. In this case January shows a similar trend to that seen in September, the month with the lowest sea ice extent. A moving average line from around the middle of the last decade would show an obvious increase. But the NSIDC reproduces this graph for every individual month and year with a downward linear trend from 1979, a noted high point for recent sea ice. The graph is widely used on social media to counter any suggestion that the ice is recovering.
Note also that the NSIDC claims the January growth extent was “below average”. Well it depends on what average you are using. The NSIDC uses a comparative average from 1981-2010, despite a more recent decade of data being available. It is not hard to see why it prefers 1981-2010 since it includes the higher levels of the 1980s and excludes the lower levels of the 2010s. Taking a 1991-2020 average would likely lead to many more ‘above average’ observations. Data before 1979 is not as accurate, but levels going back to the 1950s suggest much lower sea ice extents. Perish the thought that comparisons should be made with these data or observations made about an obvious cyclical trend seen here and in the historical record going back to the early 1800s.
The NSIDC can spin its figures as much as it likes knowing that in the era of ‘settled’ climate science it is unlikely to be widely challenged. On a more serious note, this unwillingness to question perceived authority and engage in the scientific process gave us Michael E. Mann’s infamous 1998 ‘hockey stick’ graph. This purported to show declining temperatures for 1,000 years followed by a sharp recent uptick caused by human-caused burning of hydrocarbons. The unquestioning acceptance in mainstream media, science and politics can be said to have removed the concept of natural climate variability for a generation and put many Western countries on the road to Net Zero insanity. Now the hockey stick is centre stage in a Washington D.C. libel trial brought by Mann complaining that the journalist Mark Steyn branded his work a fraud. By some accounts, the hockey stick does not seem to be having a great time in the dock.
Professor Abraham Wyner is a distinguished statistician at Mann’s own University of Pennsylvania. Asked on the court stand whether Mann’s hockey stick used manipulative techniques, he replied “yes”. He suggested it was possible that if you knew where you wanted to get to, you can lead yourself into a conclusion different from someone who walked down a different set of paths.
In earlier court documents, Mann claimed wrongly that he was a Nobel laureate, a fact noted during the trial. His hockey stick abolished the Medieval Warming Period, while subsequent leaked Climategate emails referred to “Mike Nature Trick”. This was a practice of using the most convenient proxy or temperature measurements to fit the desired narrative.
In the course of his testimony, Dr. Wyner made comments that strike at the heart of so much that is wrong with the ‘settled’ science pronouncements that seemingly cannot be disputed or even discussed.
And so what happens is, and what is happening today in statistical analysis… we’re in a crisis. A crisis of trust and replication because so many results that were thought to be true turned out not to be true and correct have now gone back and looked at or attempted to be replicated and they didn’t work. Lots of things we thought were true turned out not to be true. It’s a crisis. A problem [my colleague] has identified is due to really bad statistical sets of methods that allow you to get away with choices that would produce a very different result if you did it differently.
What the last two decades or so have shown us is that activists will use any weather outlier or natural disaster to claim the climate is collapsing, or the Earth is “boiling” in the odd universe occupied by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Statistics are bent to fit the desired narrative whether it be natural waxing and waning of ice levels or typhoon jets landing near a measuring device showing a 60-second 40.3°C temperature blip ‘record’ at RAF Coningsby. Net Zero is starting to unravel thread by thread, and it is time the spotlight was amped up to maximum to shine a light on all the dodgy science used to promote this horrendous reset of human society.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Stoopid is as stoopid does…
They’d rather go broke than admit their utopian ideas exist only in their heads.
Indeed. Morons. They deserve to go bankrupt.
I do feel sorry for the small businesses in the close area, who played no part in this woke utopia.
I agree.
Can’t stop laughing
Hahahahahahah.
“A ‘woke’ theatre in Paris known for its radical Leftist shows faces bankruptcy …”
Oh dear, never mind.
Well at least some good will come from this. Not exactly a loss to “art” although the loss of the next door bistro is nigh on criminal as a result of the actions of these firkers.
‘Academics from top universities’ More like complete and utter simpletons. Who pays these people? Really?
Funded by taxpayers probably.
The government should DO something!
Oh, hold on. Paris’s Socialist-led council is the government.
Don’t worry though. The theatre won’t go bust. The Conseil de Paris will stump up some cash somehow and will still get voted in again next election. It’s a PR system so they can’t be ousted by any right-of-centre party.
It must be a really good performance if they refuse to leave.
Bis!
I believe the production was called
A comedy of errors.
It’s Waiting for Godot. They’re still waiting.
You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.
“They sit around smoking joints”. Where do they get the money to buy them?
WHERE do they get them, plus food or did they bring in months of supplies with them? Turn the water supply off to the building and I reckon they’d likely move out after a day or so
Woke idea meets reality, exhibit number 17283.
Yup. “I repeatedly kicked a concrete wall, and now my foot hurts!”.
Yeah but the concrete wall won’t do that again – whatever it was.
The analogy with the situation at a country level would be complete if the theatre was running a clown show.
Perfect.
Or run by the Marx Brothers!
Tant pis.
Théâtre de l’absurde, mes amis.
Oh the folly. Cheered me up no end
They’re being frightened away by all these young men.
Same as usual – just men of fighting age.
When stupid, pompous, bien pensant ideas meet reality. Hilarious.
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh!
Theatre of the absurd
That’s not a very gracious attitude. You get a free show and then you take over the building. I wouldn’t put up with something like that I mean I would deal with the sheer effrontery and brass neck very harshly. If you haven’t got the balls to do that then you aren’t a man. And it wouldn’t even be difficult for them to make an example of these miscreants.
It’s good to see Evil Leftists Get Their Comeuppance!
“Reinventing the welcome for refugees in France.”
Oh the irony!
Tres amusant
Stupid communist females. I presume their biological psychology kickes in when they saw these strapping, forceful, manly Africans, and they started flirting with them.
These low IQ natives are a danger to us all. What did they expect…..oh yes, they still think all the worlds people’s are just like white, higher IQ Europeans. When are they going to learn?
Kick out all Africans and Indians, Pakistanis and many middle easterners, and any other persons feom themed would countries. They are almost always trouble, and the majority of them are on welfare and in housing paid for by the hard earned taxes of white Europeans. Time to accept reality as it smacks you in the face. Facts are uncomfortable and often emotionally imlactful – it proves you wrong.
Where is there any mention of females, communist or otherwise?
Not all women are dangly-earring-wearing socialists or beardy-weirdos.
Get back in your shed until you think of a helpful and legal way to get authorities to end this uncontrolled migration nightmare.
Being played out on a grander scale in any country near you.
Probably it’s a waiting room until their UK dinghy’s are ready
Go woke, go broke.
Well done you lefty morons.
You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh