Remember all that alarmist guff about Antarctica sea ice recording lower levels in winter a couple of years ago? Georgina Rannard of the BBC wrote a story headed ‘Antarctic sea ice at “mind-blowing” low alarms experts‘, while Clive Cookson at the Financial Times gave us his suggestion that the area “faces a catastrophic cascade of extreme environmental events… that will affect the climate around the world”. The scare story caravan has moved on to pastures new these days, not unrelated to the fact that at the end of 2024 the extent of sea ice in Antarctica was roughly the same as the 1981 to 2010 average.
According to the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), “this provides a sharp illustration of the high variability of Antarctica sea ice extent”. It does indeed, and it also provides us with a classic case study of how a short-term natural variation, well understood by many scientists, is weaponised by activists in science, politics and journalism to induce mass climate psychosis with the aim of promoting the political Net Zero lunacy.
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The less hysterical NSIDC would appear to be the same NSIDC that published a paper updated as recently as last July asking, “has Antarctic sea ice hit a breaking point?”. As the Daily Sceptic has reported in the past, Antarctica has been a bit of a disappointment to the climate cry-baby crowd since it has shown little warming for at least 70 years. “Now scientists are eager to know if climate change has finally caught up with Antarctica sea ice,” notes the NSIDC paper. Helpful as ever in the mission of preaching climate Armageddon, Rannard of the BBC provides us with an “experts say” quote: “Without its ice cooling the planet, Antarctica could transform from Earth’s refrigerator to a radiator.”
Interestingly, the second author on the Rannard story was ‘data’ specialist Becky Dale who subsequently enrolled for the six-month sabbatical run by the Green Blob-funded Oxford Climate Journalism Network. This is a crash course in climate catastrophisation reporting. Previous participants have been asked to write about how fruits such as mangos are less tasty than in the past due to climate change. A recent speaker has called for “fines and imprisonment” for those expressing scepticism about “well supported” science.
The ’mind-blowing’ quote that made headlines around the world has been attributed to Dr. Walter Meier of the NSIDC. Dr Meier, reported Rannard and Dale, “is not optimistic that the sea ice will recover to a significant degree”. At the height of the scare, Meier claimed the 2023 winter dip was far outside anything we’ve seen. Again as we have reported in the Daily Sceptic, Dr. Meier seems a tad forgetful of the past work he has done on the obvious cyclical nature of Antarctica sea ice. Ten years earlier, Meier was part of a science team that unlocked the secrets of early Nimbus satellite photographs. These revealed significant Antarctica sea ice variability in the 1960s including a high in 1964, not seen again until 2014, and a low in 1966, similar to the recent dip. At the time, Meier commented that extreme ice highs and lows “are not that unusual”.
During November and December 2024, mid to late spring in the Southern Hemisphere, the daily Antarctica sea ice loss was 140,000 square kilometres compared to 165,000 sq kms for the 1981-2010 average. By the end of December the sea ice extent was roughly around the average recorded in the 30 years to 2010. Now it seems the NSIDC is a re-convert to stressing long-term trends, noting that the 2016-2024 timeline “is too short to definitely determine that a regime shift has occurred”.
Perhaps the NSIDC ought to mark the card of the British Antarctica Survey (BAS) team, who as late as May last year issued a press release claiming that the 2023 lows would be a one in 2,000 year event without climate change. Needless to say, this scaremongering twaddle was the product of a computer model. The model told the BAS that such “evidence” adds to existing observational evidence “that the last few years’ low sea ice could signal a lasting regime shift in the Southern Ocean”. More BS than BAS, the uncharitable might conclude.
Needless to say, the recent cyclical recovery in Antarctica sea ice has been ignored by mainstream media. It’s been a bad period for alarmists, coming so soon after years of record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef put an end to yet another profitable supply of constant alarums. Thankfully the BBC finds ever more obscure ways to keep the fast-fading Net Zero fantasy alive. Perhaps not as headline-grabbing as ice and coral, but it appears that a bumble bee has been sighted recently in Scotland. It was claimed that critters were “nest building” and this was due to climate change. Britannica does not find such a sighting very surprising, noting that in winter when the temperature outside rises above 10°C, bees will leave the hive momentarily to relieve themselves of waste. Possibly with a cheery wave and a “back in three, going for a wee”.
All of the confusion – designed to constantly promote Net Zero – arises because narrative-driven commentators assign most weather and climate changes to humans adding trace amounts of a trace gas into the atmosphere. It leaves little room for explaining the role of natural variation in the changing climate. Antarctica has not warmed for at least 70 years and a recent paper found that the summer temperature had shown a dramatic 1°C fall from 1977-1999, followed by a pause since the turn of the century. Another paper found that Antarctica sea ice extent had slowly increased since the start of continuous satellite recordings in 1979.
This case study of the recent hyped sea ice alarm in Antarctica shows how the scientific process is torn up and ridiculous claims, often produced by computer models, are made on the flimsiest of short-term evidence and observation. Lectures on disregarding short-term variations only resume when normal, and often cyclical, trends reappear and follow inconvenient directions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. He is a freelance journalist who started in financial journalism in the late 1970s and for nearly 20 years ran a company – Evandale Publishing. This article was sourced HERE
16 comments:
I guess the folk in Los Angeles that lost their homes due to climate change will be relieved to learn that climate change isn't really happening at all. Now I'm waiting for Trump's assertion that the fires were a Democrat plot to distract the world's attention from his inauguration. You know, like flying flags at half-mast for Carter's funeral.
Nothing to do with climate change Jones Boy. It was all about bad luck; incompetence; DEI appointments; a complete lack of foresight when it came to water management; and the carving of more than US$17m from the local fire services budget.
I thought homes were destroyed by a bushfire?
A circa 300 year old tree cut down in the area has survived 32 such events, so it is reasonably predictable this would happen again
Jones Boy, I take my hat off to the corrupt MSM. They have done a great job on you.
And nothing at all to do with the wind and the temperature and the lack of rain. I guess life is simple when you are a paid up subscriber to Truth Social.
As I said anon@6.48, that was the 'bad luck', but as the saying goes, s*9! happens! As for the rest, quite avoidable or, at least, manageable. A rethink is required, and this devastating disaster might well result in it.
I'm with you Jones Boy. There is no doubt that this catastrophe is linked to climate change. Expect more of it. Yes, many do not see it this way, and they are entitled to their opinions and to state them, but we'd be better off without My Beechey's usual mean spirited and personalised contribution.
Chris Morrison’s excellent piece pertains to the massive Sea Ice recovery in the Antarctic going unreported by the net zero obsessed corrupt MSM. Failing to fault this report the Climate Alarmists in typical fashion redirect their climate obsession to the LA fires, not realising that the Pacific Palisades was largely destroyed by fires in 1938 and 1961. The media chronicle also records 19th century fires. The Climate we now have is very similar to what we had in the past. The severity of this repeat LA performance can be clearly laid at the feet of two incompetent liberal idiots, Newsom and Bass. However, I’m pleased to see that all is well in the Antarctic.
Unfortunately Mr McGregor, when someone says 'there is no doubt' without evidence then belittlement and sarcasm follow naturally; especially as it has become fashionable to parrot 'climate change' without the commentator explaining their reasoning. As Mr Beechey and Peter have commented there are many factors leading to fires and also many fires, the causes of which can be attributed to arsonists, fireworks, lightning, and the sun magnified through broken glass before invoking unspecified 'climate change'. Fires in Australia have been repeated over millennia, over which time periods climate extremes have ebbed and flowed, and cause of fires (which are necessary to the flora) put down to lightning strikes. I am afraid you are on the losing side in this debate, no matter how fervidly held are your misguided views.
Just for jonesboi... do read the whole thing.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/increase-in-u-s-wildfires-due-to-climate-change/
Seems to me the science deniers, who are well represented on this platform, are suffering from serious mission creep. First they restricted themselves to denying that the persistent increase in atmospheric CO2 levels and the parallel increase in mean temperatures was the result of human activity. Now they have moved on to denying there is climate change at all. I don't know what their motives are for such dogged resistance but I do know that they display all the hallmarks of a mindless fringe cult. Frankly, most people recognise the limits of their own knowledge about how the world works and are happy to accept the opinion of the experts who actually know what they are talking about. Experts have skin in the game. They have reputations and careers at stake. They have earned the right to be taken seriously. Science deniers who start with a conclusion and then cherry-pick evidence to support it deserve no such respect. Which is why the mainstream media won't have anything to do with them. And don't they just hate it!
Ha ha ha, we have a live one. Anonymous 6.02pm, could you please enlighten us by providing empirical evidence that man made co2 generates dangerous climate change?
Similar lack of reporting of the Arctic sea ice. Previously the MSM trumpeted how polar bears would be wiped out etc because of warmer temperatures. Interesting that while the LA fires were raging, NY and eastern seaboard were having coldest weather in some time, with freezing temperature originating in (surprise, surprise) the Arctic. Assuming the sea ice in Hudson bay has returned and polar bears are happy!
Anon 6.02 here. I see Beechy persists with the same old arrogance of the fringe. I don't have to prove anything. There is an army of climate scientists with mountains of data to do that job. He clearly disagrees with their judgement for reasons of his own but I am not privy to those reasons. Nor do I care until he proves his credentials to challenge the experts who actually know what they are talking about.
The exchange between Anon 602 and Rob Beechey puts the spotlight on the nature of evidence in science. There is no such thing as 'the' (singular') scientific method because it cannot be applied to many issues, reasons including scale (hard to put a whole tectonic plate in a test tube) and non-replicability because we are dealing with a complex event in the past. The 'empirical data' Rob alludes to would be data subjected to inferential statistical tests such as correlation. However, while inferential stats are very useful in drawing attention to associations between variables, they do not 'prove' anything in themselves.
The appeal to authority made by Anon isn't really in the domain of scientific reasoning at all; scientists are human and have pet theories and need research funding etc etc so fibs tend to get told now and again. Often in the history of science has "an army of ... scientists with mountains of data" been shown to have been wrong.
The case for anthropogenic climate change is by no means an open and closed one from an epistemological point of view. It may never be as atmospheres, like tectonic plats, don't fit into test tubes.
Anon 6.02 should also provide his credentials for making unsubstantiated claims. Anyone who calls others 'science deniers' obviously knows little of science, especially in the terms that Barend has indicated.
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