Not A Prison Planet

Michael Asher over at DailyTech posted Arctic Sees Massive Gain in Ice Coverage on September 3, 2008 and it has already been picked up by Prison Planet. As usual, this article is full of blatant lies that are easily disproved simply by visiting the site linked in the article! It never ceases to amaze me how gullible many people can be, and how they seemingly refuse to even attempt to verify the claims made by people like Michael Asher or Paul Watson.

First, let’s look at what Asher has to say:

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany.

With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring.

Often we are given vague references to “new research” or “latest evidence” but this time Asher has printed cold, hard facts with a direct reference to the source. This makes verifying these claims very easy, all we have to do is go to NSIDC and read what they say:

September 4, 2008
Record ice loss in August

Following a record rate of ice loss through the month of August, Arctic sea ice extent already stands as the second-lowest on record, further reinforcing conclusions that the Arctic sea ice cover is in a long-term state of decline. With approximately two weeks left in the melt season, the possibility of setting a new record annual minimum in September remains open.

Overview of conditions

Arctic sea ice extent on September 3 was 4.85 million square kilometers (1.87 million square miles), a decline of 2.47 million square kilometers (950,000 square miles) since the beginning of August.

Extent is now within 370,000 square kilometers (140,000 square miles) of last year’s value on the same date and is 2.08 million square kilometers (800,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.

Well, what do you know, it turns out that the “growth over the last year” is not “700,000 square kilometers”, and that “the Arctic melting season” is not “over for 2008″ and in fact has two weeks to go, with ice melting at a record rate!

You may have noticed that this release from NSIDC came a day after Asher’s post, so perhaps he was simply commenting on old data? However, here is the previous release from NSIDC:

August 26, 2008
Update 9:15 am MT August 27: See below.
Arctic sea ice now second-lowest on record

Sea ice extent has fallen below the 2005 minimum, previously the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era. Will 2008 also break the standing record low, set in 2007? We will know in the next several weeks, when the melt season comes to a close. The bottom line, however, is that the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent characterizing the past decade continues.

Overview of conditions

With several weeks left in the melt season, sea ice extent dipped below the 2005 minimum to stand as the second-lowest in the satellite record. The 2005 minimum, at 5.32 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles), held the record-low minimum until last year.

Recent ice retreat primarily reflects melt in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast and the East Siberian Seas off the coast of eastern Russia.

Update 9:15 am MT August 27:

Arctic sea ice extent on August 26 was 5.26 million square kilometers (2.03 million square miles), a decline of 2.06 million square kilometers (795,000 square miles) since the beginning of the month. Extent is now within 430,000 square kilometers (166,000 square miles) of last year’s value on the same date and is 1.97 million square kilometers (760,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.

So even the release posted before Asher’s post tells us that “growth over the last year” is not “700,000 square kilometers”! So where did Asher get his numbers from? The only reasonable answer is that he made them up! He certainly was able to see the August 27 update before his post, and he even linked to the NSIDC site, so there is no reason for him to have faulty numbers unless he is intentionally trying to mislead!

Now these intentionally (it seems) misleading numbers will become the new denier “meme”, spreading like wildfire and being quoted by other people who never bother to actually verify the claims and worse, by people who are also trying to mislead like Paul Watson at Prison Planet.

This is what the deniers rely on. They create phony “evidence”, spread it far and wide, and rely on the majority of readers to just assume it is true. Later, when it is thoroughly debunked, they will act like they never even said these things, while creating new lies to continue the process of misinforming you.

Those are not the only blatantly misleading “facts” in this post from Asher. For example:

Earlier this year, media accounts were rife with predictions that this year would again see a new record.

As you may by now have guessed, this of course it almost totally wrong. In reality, based on early melt rates scientists said it was possible that a new record could be reached, and in fact as I show above, they still do, but they also said it was more likely that 2007 was an exceptionally low year and that this year would not be as bad but likely the second worst on record. Guess what? That’s exactly what is happening! Here for example is a quote from a National Geographic article earlier this year:

The researchers said they can’t predict whether this coming summer will set a new record low for the extent of summer sea ice.

“It’s definitely shaping up to be another very low year,” Meier said.

(Related story: “Arctic Sea Ice Gone in Summer Within Five Years?” [December 12, 2007].)

But exactly how much melts away will depend on the summer temperature, winds, and other factors, Meier said.

“That’s weather, and something we can’t predict at this point,” he added.

The fact is, “the media” was rife with “predictions” and every single one of them was a blatant misrepresentation of what the scientists actually said. The scientists gave a range of possibilities, and the media chose the extreme (and unlikely) scenario in order to “debunk” it when the probable scenario turned out to be true, just like Asher is attempting to do here. It’s an old trick that the deniers have used for years. They push the extreme view and then they “debunk” it later, making it appear that scientists are lying to us.

If you spend any time following this subject, you soon learn who is who, and what agenda they are pushing. Eventually, you can tell whether an article is going to be full of lies just by reading the byline, or as the first comment on Asher’s post says:

By shuffle2 on 9/3/2008 2:47:55 PM , Rating: 4
is it a bad thing when you can correctly guess the author of an article just by the headline?

Normally, ad hominem arguments are a logical fallacy, but when the person in question is so consistently and blatantly misleading, eventually you have to “consider the source”. At some point you have to recognise a liar is a liar, and simply because they made the argument, the argument should be considered suspicious at the very least.