Summer Ice

RealClimate has an interesting post on arctic sea ice from Dirk Notz at the Max Planck Institute, which discusses (among other things) the obsession with the summer minimum extent. He adroitly points out several interesting points. One is that weather conditions strongly affect the summer minimum, so it’s really too early to know whether this summer’s minimum will be a record-breaker or just ho-hum. Another is that the decline in arctic sea ice thickness is where the real story lies, but for the moment thickness is not nearly so well-observed as extent so it’s extent that captures the most attention.

What’s Up?

When it comes to humankind’s influence on global climate, we should pay more attention to what’s really up.

On Thin Ice

When it comes to sea ice, especially in the arctic, the stooges have been very busy.

It wasn’t very long ago Shemp and Moe told us that Arctic sea ice was “about to hit normal.” Curly got in on the act too. Meanwhile Shemp desperately clings to the belief that the disappearance of arctic sea ice is “more of a marketing event than a climatological event,” and seems to think he can estimate sea ice volume better than the pros. I’m skeptical.

It’s the Trend, Stupid

Sometimes, one can’t help but be entertained by blog posts on WUWT. Like this one.

Monckey Business

As often happens, Eli Rabett has yet another fascinating post, this time about how Barry Bickmore has solved some of the mysteries created by Christopher Monckton. Monckton responded to the expose of his misdeeds the way he usually does: by threatening Bickmore. But you can read about that from the Rabett (honor among bloggers and all that).

Open Thread

Another open thread. Enjoy!

Still Not

Those who can’t bear to believe that the laws of physics govern global temperature, still want to maintain that it’s a random walk. They base this on the fact that the ADF (Augmented Dickey-Fuller test) doesn’t reject the presence of a unit root, if you refuse to use the BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion) for model selection and you’re willing to ignore the Phillips-Perron unit root test.

Not a Random Walk

Euler appeared, advanced toward Diderot, and in a tone of perfect conviction announced, “Sir, , hence God exists—reply!”.

One is tempted to be amazed how often such arguments are made about serious issues. But it shouldn’t be such a surprise when one considers how often people are taken in by such sophistry. If you can’t persuade them with logic, dazzle them with bullshit.

Message to Anthony Watts

Anthony:

It has now been independenly confirmed, by multiple persons, that my results regarding the impact of station dropout on global temperature are correct. Your claims, in your document with Joe D’Aleo for the SPPI, are just plain wrong.

You’ve avoided answering this criticism, claiming that you can’t replicate my results without my code. Yet several others managed to do just that. It’s not that difficult, and you were irresponsible not to investigate this issue before publishing your claims. The posts by E.M. Smith are so incoherent they resemble the ravings of a lunatic more than the results of a qualified analyst. Your only other response has been to call me a coward for blogging under a pseudonym. That’s nothing but a desperate attempt of a scoundrel to deflect attention from his own misdeeds.

Furthermore, your use of false claims to accuse NOAA scientists of deliberate deception was not just mistaken, it was unethical.

If you have any honor at all, you’ll set the record straight. You owe it to everyone, and especially to NOAA, to admit that you were wrong. And you certainly owe it to NOAA to apologize. You need to make a highly visible, highly public admission of error, and apology, for using falsehoods to accuse others of fraud.

Are you man enough?

Global Update

I’ve finished processing the southern hemisphere GHCN data, and computed the temperature according to the simple procedure for the entire globe.