Joe Romm from Climate Progress has been awarded the first service award of the week from CURRU, the Climate Unscience Rapid Response Unit, for his sterling, hard-working, thorough piece on the meltdown in the Arctic :-
https://climateprogress.org/2010/03/22/thin-ice-arctic-winds-sea-ice-extent-global-warming/
“Misreported study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.” Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed.””
“March 22, 2010 : Memo to media: Ignore the misreporting on the Arctic that focuses on sea-ice extent or area. The big Arctic news is the staggering decline in multiyear ice — ice volume. No study has yet been published undermining our understanding that human emissions are the primary cause of that long-term decline — a decline that shows no sign of reversal. Another day, another study that confirms the long-term trend gets spun 180° by the media and the disinformers. What astounds me is that people who claim to know the scientific literature keep churning out the same misleading information…The unprecedented retreat of first-year ice during summer 2007 was enhanced by strong poleward drift over the western Arctic induced by anomalously high sea-level pressure (SLP) over the Beaufort Sea that persisted throughout much of the summer. That became a Guardian story by David Adam with an especially misleading subhed: “Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds : New research does not question climate change is also melting ice in the Arctic, but finds wind patterns explain steep decline”. And of course we have a Daily Mail story by the infamous “Daily Mail Reporter”: “Arctic winds and not global warming ‘responsible for much of record loss of sea ice’”. As an aside, I understand why “Daily Mail Reporter” wants to stay anonymous — he or she is a dreadful journalist at a dreadful newspaper…The anti-science disinformers are dancing over this study, but they are dancing on thin ice…”
John Cook of Skeptical Science gets an honourable mention for adding this new Media fallacy to his taxonomy of skeptical “arguments” (denials of the facts) :-
https://www.skepticalscience.com/resources.php?a=links&arg=317
The Climate Change Science report that the denier-sceptics are using to try to mislead you is here (although not yet published officially) :-
https://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d2/masayo.ogi/2009GL042356-pip.pdf
from here :-
https://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d2/masayo.ogi/
“[13] Masayo Ogi, Koji Yamazaki and J. M. Wallace 2010: Influence of winter and summer surface wind anomalies on Summer Arctic sea ice extent, Geophysical Research Letters, 2010 March, Vol.37, L, doi:10.1029/2009GL042356, in press [PDF] (C)Copyright 2010 by American Geophysical Union (AGU)”
“Abstract : Based on a statistical analysis incorporating 925-hPa wind fields from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalyses, it is shown that the combined effect of winter and summer wind forcing accounts for 50% of the variance of the change in September Arctic sea ice extent from one year to the next (delta SIE) and it also explains roughly 1/3 of the downward linear trend of SIE over the past 31 years…”
The Guardian must have been repeating a Press Release, and didn’t dig much deeper than the headline that Climate Change deniers were pushing, ending with a truly unhelpful summary :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/22/wind-sea-ice-loss-arctic
“Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study finds : New research does not question climate change is also melting ice in the Arctic, but finds wind patterns explain steep decline : David Adam, environment correspondent : guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 March 2010…Masayo Ogi, a scientist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, and her colleagues, looked at records of how winds have behaved across the Arctic since satellite measurements of ice extent there began in 1979. They found that changes in wind patterns, such as summertime winds that blow clockwise around the Beaufort Sea, seemed to coincide with years where sea ice loss was highest…”
Some of the other main British newspapers carried the following, which indicates that the denier-sceptic circuit has been in operation :-
“Arctic winds and not global warming ‘responsible for much of record loss of sea ice’ : By DAILY MAIL REPORTER : Last updated at 5:51 PM on 22nd March 2010…”
“Good news as research suggests global warming does not directly cause all the melting of Arctic ice : By Geoffrey Lean Last updated: March 22nd, 2010”