From the Daily Skeptic
Chris Morrison
Remember the alarmism a few years ago about Antarctic sea ice recording lower levels during the winter? The BBC's Georgina Rannard wrote a story titled “Antarctic sea ice experts sound 'exciting' low-alert”, while Clive Cookson Clive Cookson) financial times We are presented with his suggestion that the region “faces a series of catastrophic extreme environmental events… that will affect climate around the world”. Now the horror-story caravan has shifted into new territory, not without the fact that Antarctica's sea ice extent at the end of 2024 will be about the same as the 1981-2010 average. According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), “This clearly illustrates the high variability of Antarctic sea ice extent.” Indeed, it does, and it also provides us with a classic case study of how short-term changes in nature, well understood by many scientists, can be weaponized by activists in science, politics, and journalism to trigger mass climate psychosis with the goal of promoting climate change. change.
The less hysterical NSIDC seems to be the same NSIDC that published a recent paper last July asking “Has Antarctic sea ice reached a tipping point?” as daily skeptic As has been reported in the past, Antarctica has been a bit of a disappointment for the climate cry baby, as it has shown little warming in at least 70 years. The NSIDC paper states: “Scientists are now eager to know whether climate change is ultimately affecting Antarctica's sea ice.” The BBC's Leonard, as keen as ever to promote a climate apocalypse, gives us an “expert says” quote: “If Without ice to cool the planet, Antarctica could transform from the planet's refrigerator into a radiator.”
Interestingly, the second author of Leonard’s story was “data” expert Becky Dale, who subsequently signed up for a six-month sabbatical hosted by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, funded by Green Blob. It’s a crash course in climate disaster reporting. Previous participants were asked to write about how fruits such as mangoes don't taste as good as they used to because of climate change. One recent speaker called for “fines and jail terms” for those who express doubts about “well-supported” science.
The “mind-blowing” quote that made headlines around the world was attributed to NSIDC's Dr. Walter Meier. Dr. Meyer is “not optimistic that sea ice will recover significantly,” Leonard and Dyer reported. At the height of the panic, Meyer claimed that the fall in winter 2023 was far beyond anything we had ever seen. As we report again in The Report daily skepticDr. Meier seems to have somewhat forgotten his past work on the apparent periodicity of Antarctic sea ice. A decade ago, Meyer was part of a scientific team that unlocked the secrets of early satellite photos of rain clouds. The data reveal significant changes in Antarctic sea ice during the 1960s, including a high in 1964 that did not occur again until 2014, and a low in 1966 that was similar to recent declines. At the time, Meyer commented that extreme highs and lows in the ice were “not unusual.”
In November and December 2024, during mid-to-late Southern Hemisphere spring, daily sea ice loss in Antarctica was 140,000 square kilometers, compared with an average loss of 165,000 square kilometers from 1981 to 2010. As of late December, sea ice extent was roughly around the average recorded over the 30 years ending in 2010. Now the NSIDC appears to be back to emphasizing longer-term trends, noting that the timetable of 2016 to 2024 is “too short” to confirm that regime change has occurred.
Perhaps NSIDC should flag the calling card of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) team, which as late as May last year issued a press release claiming that the 2023 low would be an event that would not have occurred in the year 2000 without climate change. Needless to say, this alarmist nonsense is the product of computer models. Such “evidence” complements existing observational evidence, the model told the British space agency, “that low sea ice over the past few years may herald a lasting regime shift in the Southern Ocean”. An unkind person might conclude that this is more nonsense than action.
Needless to say, the recent cyclical recovery of Antarctic sea ice has been ignored by the mainstream media. It comes at a bad time for alarmists, as years of record growth in Great Barrier Reef coral end another lucrative supply of ongoing alarm. Thankfully, the BBC has found more obscure ways to keep the fast-fading net zero fantasy alive. Perhaps not as dramatic as ice and coral, but a bumblebee appears to have been spotted in Scotland recently. Creatures are allegedly “building nests” due to climate change. Encyclopedia Britannica is not surprised by such a sight, noting that in winter, when outdoor temperatures rise above 10°C, bees temporarily leave the hive to excrete waste. Probably accompanied by a cheerful wave and “three points back, in a moment.”
All this confusion aimed at continually promoting net zero emissions is because narrative-driven commentators blame most weather and climate change on humans adding tiny amounts of trace gases to the atmosphere. It leaves little room to explain the role of natural variability in climate change. Antarctica has not warmed in at least 70 years, and a recent paper found that summer temperatures dropped sharply by 1°C from 1977 to 1999, followed by a pause since the turn of the century. Another paper found that Antarctica's sea ice extent has slowly increased since continuous satellite records began in 1979.
This case study of the recent much-hyped Antarctic sea ice warning shows how the scientific process is broken and how absurd claims, often generated by computer models, are made based on the flimsiest short-term evidence and observations. Lectures on ignoring short-term changes resume only when normal and often cyclical trends re-emerge and follow inconvenient directions.
Chris Morrison is daily skepticof Environment editor.
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