[Vision2020] National Snow Ice Data Center: Arctic Sea Ice Decline During June Continues Below Record 2007 Low Extent

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Mon Jun 28 20:08:40 PDT 2010


Please address the specifics of my post.  I have no clue why you ignore my
specific comment on the "climate change skeptics confirmation bias filtered
website" I referenced.  I implied that the following website was describing
the "recovery" in Arctic sea ice through a bias confirmation filter.  This
statement from this website is an expression of what I meant:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/29/another-arctic-sea-ice-milestone/

"...the indications are that we’ll have another summer extent that is higher
than the previous year, for the third year in a row."

Note that this statement was posted on April 29, 2010.  I doubt that any
competent climate scientist would issue such a statement at that time of the
year, knowing full well that many different variables between April 29 and
the final September maximum low Arctic sea ice extent, could alter the
outcome, so that the 2010 maximum low Arctic sea ice extent might be either
higher or lower than the previous year.  The statement under discussion from
this anthropogenic climate warming skeptic web site amounts to nothing more
than wishful thinking, inspired by the well known bias of this website.

I will not hesitate to point out a confirmation bias filter when it is clear
someone is apparently under the spell of one.

You do not address any of the other content in my post, such as U of I
climate scientist Von Walden's statement on the Arctic, or the MIT
Integrated Global System Model climate predictions.

I am requesting you specifically address the quote from U of I climate
scientist Von Walden on the Arctic.  Either disagree or agree with his
statement.  It is worded so strongly that a clear agreement or disagreement
is not such a difficult request.

Also, the scientists at MIT are geniuses, and I'm certain they are aware of
Chaos Theory and how it can apply to climate science.
I suggest you contact the authors of the MIT study referenced and clarify to
them the reasons why they are exaggerating (if this is your view) the
probability of the temperature predictions in their study. I would be happy
to discover the MIT scientists are wrong.  Maybe you could publish a paper
refuting their work?  A peer reviewed paper, of course.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:27 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> I'd suggest hesitating before describing some climate change skeptics as
> having confirmation bias filters.
>
> Take a look at the daily sea ice extent page at the joint International
> Arctic Research Center and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) page:
>
> http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
>
> Follow the light green line (2006).  If it was after 2007, we would have
> been saying at this point in the cycle that it was way below the 2007 sea
> ice extent numbers and that anybody who thought that it wasn't going to
> break the 2007 record low had severe confirmation bias filters on.  Take a
> look at the Sep-Oct time frame, though.  The data was much higher than in
> 2007.
>
> Will 2010 (the red line) follow 2006 and be higher than the 2007 numbers?
>  Or will it follow 2007 and be a new record low?  Or will it do something
> different?  I have no idea, and I doubt that many of our scientists could
> predict that with much certainty.  It's akin to predicting the weather as
> opposed to predicting climate.  Who knows what any given year will be like?
>  I'll be interested to see what happens in late July where the 2007 line had
> crossed the 2006 one.  That should give a better indication of what's going
> to happen in the September to October time frame.
>
> As for "confirmation bias filters", I would be careful lest you find them
> on your own nose.  Myself and (I presume) many other skeptics are of the
> opinion that we simply don't know as much about the climate as climate
> scientists would like us to believe.  Thus, confirming our bias is easy.
>  All it takes is something surprising happening somewhere in the world with
> respect to climate.  Surprising things happen all the time in a system that
> the Chaos Theory was originally inspired from.  That doesn't mean that it
> should be taken as confirmation that anthropic global warming is definitely
> wrong, just that there is more room for debate than climate scientists and
> policy makers would like us to believe.
>
> On the other hand, AGW promoters tend to jump on graphs like the one at the
> NSIDC website and laugh at anyone that thinks the situation could change
> from what climate scientists predict.
>
> Paul
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
>> During June 2010, Arctic sea ice decline has continued at a pace below the
>> record low 2007 year (  http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ ,
>> http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png).  The data on Arctic sea ice extent is updated daily on the NSIDC website,
>> with a one day lag.  Of course, this trend could change so that 2010 does
>> not exceed the 2007 record low Arctic sea ice extent.  Note this is not a
>> discussion of ice volume, or thickness.
>>  Arctic sea ice extent is now on June 27 more below the record 2007 rate
>> of decline than it was May 31, 2010.  So much for the Arctic sea ice extent
>> "recovery" promoted by some climate change skeptics confirmation bias
>> filtered websites (
>> http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/29/another-arctic-sea-ice-milestone/ )
>> as evidence to question the seriousness of anthropogenic climate warming.
>>  As U of I climate scientist Von Walden, who does field work in the Arctic
>> and Antarctic, as the following September 2009 Spokesman Review article
>> described, phrased it:
>>
>> http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/sep/29/ui-professor-joins-ice-melt-research/
>>
>> “Things are changing very quickly in the Arctic right now,” Walden said.
>> “There’s really no debate that we’re perturbing our atmosphere and global
>> warming is beginning to occur.”
>>
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Von Walden's certainty, given how this quote is worded, regarding human
>> impacts on warming Earth's climate, no doubt raises the ire of some
>> anthropogenic warming skeptics.  I think a more temperate assessment, as the
>> scientifically conservative IPCC has indicated, is that the science
>> indicates over 90 percent odds that human impacts are the primary drivers of
>> the rapid and profound climate warming occurring, more than probable enough
>> given the magnitude of probable impacts (ocean coastal flooding alone would
>> be a massive global disaster), to justify quick and significant action to
>> reduce CO2 emissions, and other impacts.
>>  However, the MIT Integrated Global System Model indicated in 2009 that
>> with a "No-Policy Case" scenario regarding human impacts on climate, the
>> odds of global average temperatures increasing less than 3 degree Celsius by
>> 2100, are less than 1 percent.  In other words, the odds of extreme climate
>> change (most climate scientists would agree that a 3 degree Celsius or
>> higher increase in global average temperatures will result in extreme
>> climate change) by 2100 with business as usual human activity, is over 99
>> percent.  MIT's Global System Model predictions from 2003 are lower than the
>> 2009 predictions, and the 2009 predictions are higher than IPCC predictions.
>>  As MIT has improved the model, it is indicating climate change of greater
>> magnitude than previously.  To quote from the published article abstract on
>> the MIT Integrated System Model 2009 (Journal of Climate 2009; 22:
>> 5175-5204):
>>  "The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003
>> projections; for example, the median surface warming in 2091–2100 is 5.1°C
>> compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study."
>> -----------------------------
>>
>> This conforms with the more recent findings during the past decade of many
>> climate scientists, that climate change is progressing faster than
>> previously predicted.  The rate of Arctic sea ice decline is one major
>> indicator that fits this faster trend  (
>> http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/sea_ice.html <
>> http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/future/sea_ice.html> ).
>>
>>  I recall NASA Climate scientist James Hansen stating in an interview,
>> when pressed about the certainty of his general climate predictions, that
>> they are over 99 percent certain, within a given range of possible
>> temperature outcomes:
>>  Info at websites below on the MIT Integrated Global System Model
>> probabilities for various global temperature increases by 2100
>>  http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2010-May/070133.html
>>  http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html
>>  http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1
>>  ------------------------------------------
>> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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