David Rose and his tabloid "reporting" of Arctic sea ice and other nonsense

UPDATE 3 15 Sept 13: David Rose has written another error-ridden article before taking the time to correct the errors in this one - read about it here.

UPDATE 2: See below for a Press Release from the IPCC confirming that David Rose was wrong.  The IPCC is holding its scheduled meeting at the end of the month.  There are no other meetings scheduled.

UPDATE: David Rose apparently also writes as "Hayley Dixon" for the UK Telegraph?? (Not really.)  A more subdued look and feel (compare with the Mail Online here) but the same lies and disinformation. (h/t Ed Hawkins via twitter.)

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David Rose is a so-called journalist in the UK.  One of his specialities is disinformation about climate and climate science.  He writes for a tabloid in the UK, maybe one rung up from what is affectionately known as the gutter press.  You know the type - boobs, scout master "scandals", UFO's and other sensationalist crap to titillate the hoi polloi.  The Mail is maybe a smidgen above that, maybe.  Tabloids are not considered serious newspapers and have very little to do with news. To illustrate the content and target audience, here is a list of the most-read items as listed on the Mail Online today, in order:

1. The daughter of a radio "breakfast host" gets married
2. A pregnant woman on Big Brother, a very lowbrow reality tv show
3. The UK Prime Minister attends a family wedding
4. An internet harasser who said he got death threats
5. A television "celebrity" faints
6. Sensationalist scare stories about Pakistan, water and the Euro (Yeah, I know!)
7. A member of the British royal family is "spotted" on a yacht

The list might change before readers get to it, but I expect every list is similar.  That sets the scene nicely for this semi-fictional sensationalist nonsense from a David Rose, who has a history of making up stuff about climate as documented here and here and here and here and here  and here  and here (shall I continue?).

David Rose's headline this time is utterly ridiculous (see here - archive sites are still not working).  He writes: "Record return of Arctic ice cap".  Never mind that the sea ice in the Arctic is the fifth or sixth lowest extent on record.  He says that according to "eminent" scientists the world is about to plunge into a cooling period that will last till the middle of this century.  He's another denier who is nutty as a fruit cake and is pandering to an audience who are as ignorant about climate as anyone could be - maybe with the exception of the deniers who read WUWT and similar silly anti-science blogs for a hobby.

David doesn't say who all these "eminent" scientists are (he quotes one below but no others).  He does quote a years old report of Professor Maslowski (from 2007), but neglects to let his readers know that projection has since been revised.  Nor that few scientists would agree with the revised projection made in 2011  (2016 plus or minus three years).  From the same BBC 2011 article: 

...one peer - Dr Walt Meier from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado - said the behaviour of sea ice becomes less predictable as it gets thinner.  "[Maslowski's] is quite a good model, one thing it has is really high resolution, it can capture details that are lost in global climate models," he said. "But 2019 is only eight years away; there's been modelling showing that [likely dates are around] 2040/50, and I'd still lean towards that.  "I'd be very surprised if it's 2013 - I wouldn't be totally surprised if it's 2019."

And in this 2012 paper, Maslowski et al write about Arctic sea ice, including various projections and state, in reference to one of them:

Given the estimated trend and the volume estimate for October–November of 2007 at less than 9,000 km3 (Kwok et al. 2009), one can project that at this rate it would take only 9 more years or until 2016 ± 3 years to reach a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer. Regardless of high uncertainty associated with such an estimate, it does provide a lower bound of the time range for projections of seasonal sea ice cover. (We do note that other published estimates also have large or indeterminate uncertainties.) At the same time, observational proxies of ice thickness (Maslanik et al. 2011) and independent model estimates (Polar Science Center 2011) of sea ice volume suggest a further decline of ice volume since 2007.

So Maslowski is talking about a lower bound, not making an absolute prediction.  Deniers like Anthony Watts and David Rose won't tell you that.  Would they even have bothered to check?

David Rose reckons he nabbed a quote from Judith Curry but you can't take him at his word.  This quote isn't about Arctic ice, though.  It's about Judith's favourite subject - doubt.  Judith is getting nuttier day by day, so I wouldn't be surprised if she said to David that: "In fact, the uncertainty is getting bigger. It’s now clear the models are way too sensitive to carbon dioxide. I cannot see any basis for the IPCC increasing its confidence level."  She has nothing on which to base that claim.  But Judith does like to shout "uncertain" as often as she can.  She's an avowed delayer wanting to wait till the earth boils before doing anything to mitigate global warming.

David adds a quote from Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, with David claiming (falsely of course) that he was one of the first to investigate the ocean cycles. ( Ocean cycles have been investigated since at least early last century, long before Tsonis was born.)  According to David Rose, Professor Tsonis said: ‘We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.'  Whether he did say that or not I don't know.  But even if he did make that contrarian claim, one scientist is not enough to claim "eminent scientists" think the earth is about to turn cold. Nor is 2013 plus 15 years equal to 2050.

Then David tells a big fat lie and writes: "The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to hold a crisis meeting."  Actually that's three lies:

1. The Mail on Sunday didn't make any revelations, it is in the disinformation business, not the information business.  (Refer links above to David Rose's history of peddling lies about climate.)
2. The Arctic ice sheet has not 'returned' in the manner that David would have you believe.  The Arctic "ice sheet" that David refers to is not an "ice sheet", it's sea ice and is on a rapidly declining trend.  It is shrinking not growing.  See my previous article for more info.
3. The UN climate change body that David refers to would be the IPCC.  It is not to my knowledge holding any crisis meeting.  I expect David is referring to the long-scheduled meeting to consider the final draft of WG1.  The 36th session of the IPCC is scheduled to take place in Stockholm from the 23 to 26 September.  It would most likely have been in the IPCC calendar for years.

I see that Ed Hawkins says he told David Rose that the IPCC was NOT having a crisis meeting in Stockholm.  But what does David Rose care about the facts.

Why does David Rose tell lies to his readers?  Who can guess.  Maybe it's to try to hang onto his job, though why that's of any value to him I cannot imagine.  

I'm trying to imagine how much status his job gives him.  It would be quite a conversation stopper.  "What do you do, David?"  "Oh, I make up fantastic lies about climate change for a sensationalist tabloid in the UK".  Ummm... yeah, right.

Update: It's been suggested I post a picture.  Here is one I put together for an article a couple of days ago (which has some more besides). It's an animated gif comparing Arctic sea ice on 5 September 1980 with that on 5 September 2013 - big difference:

Source: Cryosphere Today

Also, since writing this there are very good criticisms of the Mail and Telegraph pieces by Dana Nuccutelli in his UK Guardian blog and by Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy at Slate as well as some thoughts from Catmando of Ingenious Pursuits and some tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Greenpeace UK climate blog.

Update 2 Press Release from the IPCC

GENEVA, 11 September - In response to recent articles about forthcoming meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC would like to note that:

Contrary to the articles the IPCC is not holding any crisis meeting. The IPCC will convene a plenary session to finalize the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, in line with its normal procedures, in Stockholm on 23-26 September 2013. The session has been scheduled for several years and this timetable has been repeatedly publicized by the IPCC.

As part of the IPCC's regular procedures, member governments were invited to comment on the final draft of the Summary for Policymakers of the Working Group I report ahead of the Stockholm meeting. Over 1,800 comments were received - a typical number for this exercise - and they will be considered as planned at the meeting in Stockholm. The Summary for Policymakers is due to be released on 27 September 2013. The accepted Final Draft of the full Working Group I report, comprising the Technical Summary, 14 Chapters and three Annexes, will also be released online in unedited form, on Monday 30 September. Following copy-editing, layout, final checks for errors the full Working Group I report “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis”, and its Summary for Policymakers will be published online in January 2014 (tbc) and in book form by Cambridge University Press a few months later.

Click here for the press release.

Thanks to Anonymous for the link to this latest atrocious piece of disinformation from David Rose and the Mail Online.  Whats the bet it will soon appear on Anthony Watts science denying blog, WUWT?