Anthony Watts blog has been really boring lately. Nothing really ridiculous. But today he's come up with a doozy.
Not the North Pole I
Anthony writes that people were wrong about a webcam being at the north pole.
Thing is, of course, that even if the buoy isn't right on the North Pole, disappearing ice north of Greenland is something new. We'll be getting used to it more and more in coming decades. But that's not the doozy.
Not the North Pole II
The real killer is that he goes and writes:
And, of course, photos actually taken at the North Pole by the US Navy show that such open water is a regular occurrence in the past:and posts this picture and has written as the caption: "Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 1959. (US Navy photo)".
Thing is, of course, that this isn't a photo of Skate surfacing at the North Pole. On this website it's labelled as: Skate (SSN-578), taken in summer, perhaps in August 1958. And at Wikipedia that photo is described as "Date and Location uncertain". According to Wikipedia, Skate didn't first surface at the North Pole until March 1959. (Note that that navsource.org website is not reliable. It has the same photos (not the above) with different captions elsewhere on the page.)
He's done this before and had to correct himself!
You know what's even more hilarious? Anthony did this trick before, back in March last year. And he had to correct the caption back then. (Early onset?) I wonder if anyone will get him to correct it this time around. The length of time before anyone points out his deception could signal by how much the readership of WUWT has deteriorated.
Here's a picture that is captioned as Skate at the North Pole, this time in 1962:
Here is a picture of the Skate at the North Pole on March 17, 1959. There are an endless parade of images on the net of the Skate at the NP, most of them misidentified. I was swatting back an idiot at the HuffPo on this last night. He kept posting links to images which were not what they were supposed to be (a couple referring to this event which were taken in full daylight, if you think for second about when the sun first peeks above the horizon at the NP you would understand why they are not this event). The linked image is the only one I am aware of which is verifiably of the Skate at the NP.
ReplyDeleteThere are some other images of Skate and Seadragon at the NP in August 1962 which are probably genuine. The problem with citing these as evidence of melting at that time is that the subs rendezvoused with an icebreaker during that voyage although I cannot find what the date was.
This is yet another class of climate zombies.
Strange you do not mention the picture from 1987 showing melting at the North Pole in the same post or the later picture from the same buoy showing refreezing and you also do not mention the fact that meltwater pond formation in the Arctic is an acknowledged and common event.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.climatecentral.org/news/melting-at-north-pole-how-bad-is-it-16294
First
"The second thing to keep in mind is that melting sea ice at or near the North Pole is actually not a rare event. Observations from the webcams dating back to 2002, and from satellite imagery and nuclear-powered submarines that have explored the ice cover since the Cold War era dating back several decades, show that sea ice around the North Pole has formed melt ponds, and even areas of open water, several times in the past."
Seems you forgot to check that before you posted your claim that all photos showing melting near the North Pole in the past are fake. Whoops.
And
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/27/a-closer-look-at-that-north-pole-lake/?_r=0
"Ponds of meltwater form routinely on Arctic Ocean sea ice in the summer. The sea ice is floating on the Arctic Ocean and in constant motion. The autonomous camera that took these images was placed on the ice a few dozen miles from the North Pole in early spring, but has since drifted hundreds of miles."
So what was your claim again?
"disappearing ice north of Greenland is something new"
Not according to the New York Times and Climate Central.
But other than those minor omissions, good article.
Strange you do not mention the picture from 1987
DeleteWhy is that strange? It's not as if there was less ice in 1987 compared to today.
Perhaps you think I should congratulate Anthony on the very rare occasions that he tells the truth or by mistake gets a fact right. One thing is, I didn't corroborate that photo. Another thing is that photo shows a sea of ice, not open ocean. Here's an illustration of ice cover at around the minimum (mid September) in 1987 compared to a couple of days ago - before the minima this year.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=15&fy=1987&sm=08&sd=17&sy=2013
As for your accusation about "all the photos are fake" - no-one said that at all. You are making it up. I just pointed out that the photos I showed didn't portray what Anthony claimed they did.
Disappearing ice north of Greenland at the scale of today is indeed something new. Deny all you want. It doesn't change the facts that the Arctic sea ice is getting less each summer and before long there'll be a period in summer when the Arctic will be virtually ice free.
Even aside from your denial and false accusations, Anonymous, that was a woeful comment :(