Arctic summer sea ice stopped declining a decade ago, but green activists have spared no effort to continue promoting the poster scare that humans will cause it all to disappear within a few years. In his recent BBC Frozen Planet II agitprop, Sir David Attenborough claimed it might all be gone by 2035. In an excellent piece of investigative reporting titled Lies, Damned Lies and Arctic Graphs, the climate writer Tony Heller recently lifted the lid on many of the tactics used to keep the scare in the headlines. “They bury all the older data and pretend they don’t notice sea ice is increasing again. What they are doing is not science but propaganda,” he charges.
The Daily Sceptic has written a number of articles of late noting that summer sea ice extent in the Arctic is recovering. In Greenland, I recently reported, the ice sheet may have increased in the year to August 2022. Invariably, social media commentators reply by publishing the sea ice graph below, compiled by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
This is reproduced from Heller’s YouTube work and shows a linear decrease in September (the lowest point of annual sea ice) from 1979. There is something wrong with this graph, notes Heller, since the minimum is actually higher now than 10 and 15 years ago, but the crude straight black ‘trend’ line tricks the eye into missing this. He plots the data as a moving average to show the real trend more clearly.
We see here the end of the decline in summer sea ice started a decade ago. The low point on which most fanciful forecasts of a North Pole passage are based is 2012. Heller notes that sea ice changes are cyclical, not linear. And he is right. Drawing a straight line down from a 1979 high point to a lower point tells us nothing about current trends.
Heller then goes on to ask why the graphs start at 1979. The NSIDC and NASA say it is because satellite records started in 1979.Heller says this is a good story “except for the fact that it isn’t true”. He goes on to quote the first UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 1990 that stated: “Satellite observations have been used to map sea ice extent routinely since the early 1970s. The American Navy Joint Ice Center has produced weekly charts which have been digitised by NOAA [the U.S. weather service]”.
It might not be a surprise to learn that sea ice extent was lower in the 1970s and it peaked in 1979. By starting the graph in 1979 a ‘fake’ linear downward trend is produced. What they are doing, is hiding crucial data, Heller says.
This ‘hidden’ data is clearly shown above in a graph from the first IPCC report in 1990. The lower levels of ice in the 1970s are plotted and the peak is 1979. But by 2001, the IPCC had removed much of the increase of that decade, and now the chart shows the ice actually starting to fall from 1975. Heller also provides evidence that the 1950s, which are not shown on these charts, had lower sea ice than the 1970s, meaning the 1970s were a recent peak. He goes on to note that the 2001 IPCC report also saw the publication of the ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph that became notorious for removing the medieval warm period.
Sea ice in the Arctic, like most if not all climate trends, is cyclical not linear. Heller notes the influence of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, a cyclical ocean current whose warming and cooling seems to be influential in controlling Arctic temperatures. Records and observations going back to the early 1800s show considerable variations of the ice extent. Attenborough is not alone in forecasting boating at the North Pole. It’s been a cut-and-paste scare story for decades. Heller notes a comment in the New York Times from 1958 that read: “Some scientists estimate that the polar ice pack is 40% thinner and 12% less in area than it was a half century ago, and that even within the lifetime of our children, the Arctic ocean may open, enabling ships to sail over the North Pole.”
Meanwhile the latest updates on the Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet show a continuing improving trend towards higher extents. Since these improvements do not generally figure in the mainstream headlines, the Daily Sceptic can report that November sea ice was 1.05 million square kilometres greater than a record low in 2016 of 8.66m sq kms.
The surface mass of the Greenland ice sheet (above), measured by the Danish Meteorological Institute, has shown some stonking improvements over the last two months, with the 2022-23 blue line ahead of all the previous marks shown.
Tony Heller’s investigative work is important in calling out the ‘settled’ climate science cartel that runs a postmodern, pseudoscience campaign designed to implement a politically-contrived Net Zero agenda. Perhaps the fact checkers of mainstream media might like to start acting less like political poodles, and start investigating some of the biased data that bombards the carefully-curated public discourse – starting with climate model forecasts that are never correct, attribution studies that invent stories about humans causing bad weather, and corrupted surface temperature databases that continually adjust their ‘record’ figures higher.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Good article. ‘Hide the expansion’. ‘Hide the Arctic is not doing much of anything when compared to historical data’.
So the recent cold spell is due to the melting Arctic which blah blah causes the changey thingy blah blah and makes it colder (please send money for further ‘research’).
Except the 1% global ice volume Arctic and Greenland Ice sheets (15%) are expanding or doing not much of anything if viewed historically. So how can a stable Arctic which is not melting cause cold snaps due to plant food as stated by the climate religion? And if the winter was mild like 2 winters ago then what is the answer?
The idiocy of the Klimat-tard cult boggles, along with their fascistic pursuit of money and power. No morality in the Gaia cults. $cience. Follow the Trillion$.
These tired old bones prefer warmth to cold. I do not consider it an improvement if the Arctic is getting colder. OK, sea level is still rising gently. If anyone complains that the sea will flood homes in 100 years, ask them how old their present dwelling is – invariably much less than that.
That’s also just nonsense. Large parts of the Netherlands and Belgium have been below sea-level ever since they came to be dry land at all due to human work (and pre-industrial technology) being put into making that happen. Where sea-levels are a problem, people build dikes. They’re common throughout all of the continental shore of the North Sea.
And yet………
Melting ice caps will enable China’s military forces to “reach into the Atlantic”, the Chief of the Defence Staff has warned.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/14/chinas-military-could-reach-atlantic-ice-caps-melt-warns-armed/
That’s good to know
. If we have time to worry about the Chinese navy once the polar ice caps have melted because of climate change, climate change in itself must be harmless.
Perhaps someone will tell some bloke called Radakin, chief of defence or the suchlike, with his alarmist statement the Chinese will be able to sail round the melting poles into the Atlantic. But then again just a bid for more defence spending to be blown on civil servants and undelivered projects
Probable a stupid question, but don’t the Chinese have nuclear powered submarines that can go under the ice?
Extrapolating 30 or 40 years of Arctic sea ice to try and explain 4 billion years of climate change on our planet is like looking at a bare patch of 1 square cm of my 5 acre farm, and calling it a desert, when it is actually an abundance of green.
The pushers of the climate con do not understand context, or else are truly corrupted by a financial motive (Al Gore et al).
Definitely the latter.
Motive is more about power and control, the financial element of course comes trotting after.
Another good trick is to adjust old temps down and new temps up, creating a scary slope. Then project to the moon.
https://realclimatescience.com/rewriting-the-climate-at-nasa/
I’m fairly certain this documentary from 2007 is the one I saw on channel 4 ( obv not BBC material! ) back in the day, and ever since then I’ve known that man-made global warming to be complete hogwash;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTq8-hnDeyk&ab_channel=ClaudeStrobbe
It wasn’t that long ago The Coming Ice Age: With Leonard Nimoy was worrying over an imminent ice age and how we could potentially halt it with black soot on the ice sheets, and whatever their data back then concluded that ice age was still possible after the industrial revolution was well established (and that thing that causes all the [supposed] warming) so they know there are many [other] factors at play.
Now they’re warning of the complete opposite whilst ignoring all these other factors? Just goes to show the data can be presented to fit any hypothesis, from one extreme to another. Granted they were wrong back then, but that doesn’t mean the opposite is true now (unless of course an ice age is still on the cards). Their fraudulent data might support a warming planet, given that mini-mini ice age was used as a convenient baseline but that doesn’t make the warming (even if there genuinely was any) man made or anything outside the norms either. Why is that period considered normal and today’s not normal?
Thank god they didn’t cover the ice with black soot! Imagine the total catastrophe that would have been. Honestly, when are these people going to understand that we live on something infinitely more complex, interrelated, and balanced than we could ever imagine and that tinkering with its mechanisms is the one thing that will cause the problems we are trying to avert! Better by by far to live in this magnificent place, be a part of it as we already are, and learn to dance with its changes and adapt in a creative, harmonious way than trying to play god at every shadow that looms.
Thanks for all the data and reporting. We Greenland polar bears are especially thankful that the truth about the ice pack and the melting — hah! — of our glaciers is being told by someone in the media who is not engaged in climate propaganda. — Grandpa Polar Bear https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BQ2B29GP
Spot on article. The fact that they hide the data is 100% correct and very sad. This website below used to be fantastic and had masses of historical surface area data about ice extent in both the Arctic and Antarctic, but now it only shows the daily satellite pictures (these seem to have stopped in Sept 2022) with no surface area data.
https://cryosphere.today
I know because I used to regularly monitor the site 20 years ago.
Confessions of a Computer Modeler
“Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result. I should know.”
After three iterations [of remodeling] I finally blurted out, “What number are you looking for?” He didn’t miss a beat: He told me that he needed to show $2 billion of benefits to get the program renewed.
I finally turned enough knobs to get the answer he wanted, and everyone was happy.
Was the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] official asking me to lie?
I have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he believed in the value of continuing the program. (Congress ended the grants in 1990.)
Robert J. Caprara, “Confessions of a Computer Modeler,”
The Wall Street Journal, 9 July 2014
https://www.wsj.com/articles/confessions-of-a-computer-modeler-1404861351
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“There is something fascinating about science. On gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact”——Mark Twain. ——-But in those days scientists were actually indulging in a genuine search for truth. It would be interesting to see a quote from Mr.Twain about today’s Government funded data adjusters and their genuine search for anything that seems to support public policy and ignores everything that doesn’t
Chris I think your headline is a bit unfair. If scientists were hiding the data we wouldn’t have it available to us. Its mainstream media where most of the problem lies because they refuse to accurately report on what is actually happening if it doesn’t support the crazy net zero agenda. There must be scientists who see what is really happening and who would love to report it on TV but are never given the opportunity. People like Attenborough have lost any credibility they had with anybody who does any research on climate and he has become no more than a purveyor of a lying pile of political propaganda. He is either too old or too stupid or working to a political agenda to report things accurately and he has unlimited use of our TV licence fees to do it on the BBC. While this is the case many people watch his extortionately funded programs full of inaccurate or distorted data and believe the rubbish he spouts. Surely there must be somewhere, a UK TV station to take this crap on and set the record straight.