Bishop Hill Economist on the Arctic
Jun 15, 2012 Climate: Surface The Economist looks at the Arctic - first recent changes to its climate and secondly the effects these might have on the geopolitics in the area. This bit raised a grimace:
A heat map of the world, colour-coded for temperature change, shows the Arctic in sizzling maroon. Since 1951 it has warmed roughly twice as much as the global average. In that period the temperature in Greenland has gone up by 1.5°C, compared with around 0.7°C globally. This disparity is expected to continue. A 2°C increase in global temperatures—which appears inevitable as greenhouse-gas emissions soar—would mean Arctic warming of 3-6°C.
Don't they know that the sizzling maroon is an extrapolation? You would have thought a balanced article might mention these kinds of issues, not to mention the situation in the Antarctic.
Reader Comments (36)
I used to be a regular reader of "The Economist", even subscriber (especially in the pre-internet years), as they used to be true skeptics - in fact, the "old" The Economist would have been the first to point out the nonsensical aspects of CAGW and the state-control agenda behind it. In fact, they were the only ones, at one point, to come in defense of Bjorn Lomborg in his early days.
Then - I think around 2004 or so - "The Economist" became a boring, unoriginal, follow-the-mainstream-opinion-of-the-City magazine. Whenever I think they may be getting saner and quietly dropping the whole CAGW thing, they come up with something like this. These days not even the book reviews are interesting .
I've long given up expecting balance in the Economist, especially with regard to climate matters. My current subscription will be my last - it usually goes in the bin unopened these days.
Funny Peter B...I had the same experience!
Their climate silliness was an eye-opener, I now find most of their pieces disgustingly conformist.
Anyway, "warmed roughly twice as much as the global average" is a common phenomenon, it applies to every part of the globe which is being covered by this or that mindless climate journalist or politician.
The Economist, like the BBC, like the Royal Society, is a victim of the group-think on CAGW that is so congenial to the prosperous left-wing, and therefore has been so uncritically adopted by any organisation in which prosperous left-wing people have gained control. Ideology trumping science and common-sense. Why is something so poisonous and so destructive, and so ill-founded as CAGW is, so congenial to anyone?
Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
Actually that would make a good tag line for Climate Science in general.
"Climate Science™ - Why Let the Facts Get In the Way of a Good Story?"
David C - if you write to them they'll stop the sub and refund the remainder
I cancelled my subscription in protest against their support for the invasion of Iraq.
I'll maybe subscribe again and then cancel it in protest against their 'sizzling' Arctic. (Is the adjective metaphorical or have they been reading James-boiling-ocean-Hansen?)
I recall the days when Matt Ridley was science editor of the Economist. I doubt that such a penetrating and rigorous thinker would get a look in now.
John Shade, since when has The Economist been 'left wing'?
Don't they know that the sizzling maroon is an extrapolation?
They wouldn't understand extrapolation let alone 'gridding' if it bit them.
would one of our more scientifically minded commenters please explain something that I have never had an answer to. I believe the arctic air is dry and cold and that it takes a lot less energy to increase the 'average' temperature of cold dry air by say 1.5C than it does to increase the hot humid air of the tropics by 1.5C. So if heat is transferred from the tropics to the arctic (on its way to outer space) there would be a nominal decrease in the 'average' temperature at the tropics and an enormous increase of 1.5c in the 'average' temperature in the arctic but it is just the heat in the system moving about. Do the methods we use to caculate the anomaly in the arctic take account of enthalpy? Answers on a postcard please.
Sounds like the best possible scenario. If the coldest parts receive more heat then the warmer parts receive less. The heat is getting where it's needed.
This is the best chart in the special report (under the subsecion "science"):
http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120616_SRC263.png
Or here
The warming is far more where the thermometers ain't. Oh, and all that maroon in the Mercator projection, you need to look at it on a globe.
No longer my first choice for reading on aircraft. Sometimes the Guardian makes mroe sense.
So, this presumably is Hansen's warming based on falsifying data and extrapolating it 100s of miles.
Jun 15, 2012 at 1:49 PM | BitBucket - in response to your query about when The Economist went left.
Not as early as 1843, probably late 20th century. I guess sometime in the 1990s the transformation (not a complete transformation I'd say - they can still show some independent thought from time to time) was well established. Some support for that here: http://www.search.com/reference/The_Economist_editorial_stance
I did read a comment somewhere to the effect that you know you are a libertarian when you regard the Economist as a left-wing rag. I wouldn't go as far as to say that, although I do suspect myself of having libertarian tendencies...
Here is some discussion of the drift left becoming clear during 2002 to 2004: http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.co.uk/2005/11/economist.html
I also allowed my economist subscription to lapse tired of their aimless drivel.
Steven Goddard keeps a regular eye of artic ice and the webcam at Greenland
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/memorial-day-update-greenland-surfers-headed-to-the-beach/
Looks balmy to me!
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/arctic-doomed-time-to-put-up-your-bets-on-the-record-minimum/
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/antarctic-temperature-drops-below-the-freezing-point-of-co2/
But there's a glimmer of hope
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/north-carolina-senate-passes-anti-nutcase-bill-ap-immediately-lies-about-it/
When Norman Macrae (d. June 11th, 2010 aged 89) retired in 1988, The Economist made a concious decision to move their editorial stance to the left, to increase their appeal among left-leaning (US=liberal) elites on the US East Coast, and hence their circulation (reading serious magazines is not part of the job description of the elites on the US Left [sorry, West] coast - read Hollywood). So as not to 'frighten the horses', they did this slowly, author by author, column by column, helped by their policy of not naming columnists. This was never a secret.
I would confirm that a letter of cancellation brings an immedite refund of any unused portion of the subsription.
I sometimes discuss issues raised by The Economist with socialist friends and they consider both the magazine and me to be firmly on the right. Are there many socialists who support free trade, globalisation, flat taxes, education vouchers, to name just a few issues?
Or are you in the US where the President is caricatured as being a 'socialist' and the word 'liberal' is used as an insult? And this despite most of US politics standing to the right of the UK's conservatives? From such a perspective I guess one might say The Economist is on the left.
It hardly matters. I find the magazine a very good read. Actually so do socialist friends (although they have to hold their noses to actually buy a copy), which rather weakens my argument.
Jun 15, 2012 at 2:13 PM | Patagon
This is the best chart in the special report (under the subsecion "science"):
http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120616_SRC263.png
I presume you are being ironic.
As Bugs would say: "What a maroon"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Kh7nLplWo
The final straw that led me to cancel my Economist subscription was the glowing review of the embarrassingly poorly written pro-CAGW book “Ultimatum” (which I bought based on the review, thinking it might be an interesting summer read), which then resurfaced in the Books and Arts section just prior to the Copenhagen summit with the recommendation that “Copenhagen’s hotels should put a copy in every room." Truly unbelievable.
Ooops.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
Are you saying the Arctic hasn't warmed, just because they are using an extrapolation?
Does DMI's Arctic surface temp data (latitude 80 degrees North) show any such "trends"? I don't believe so. Why can't The Economist actually LQQK at data, instead of going by 'trusted scientists'? Is it somehow immoral to take a gander oneself? And include it in their report? DMIs data set does go back to the 1950s....
Another former fan who doesn't even bother to open The Economist any more - although no doubt there is still some worthwhile stuff among the dross.
In 1990 I got, against all the odds, a job in probably the most rigorous public policy factory in Australia, despite not a lot of qualifications or experience. When I was asked in the interview about my sources for information, I mentioned that I always read TE pretty much from cover to cover, and even the professionally impassive faces of my inquisitors revealed that I had scored a goal.
It's not something I'd be citing if I was doing that interview today.
Remember, C. Northcote Parkinson's famous and timeless work was first published in TE, back when it was well worth the cover price.
In the one-half hour since I first posted to this thread at BH, the comments at the Economist grew by about 10-fold.
spartacusisfree @ Jun 15, 2012 at 2:40 PM said "So, this presumably is Hansen's warming based on falsifying data and extrapolating it 100s of miles."
Actually, not Hansen's warming, at least if the GISS database is any indication. Trying accessing their data via Humlum's place,
http://www.climate4you.com/WorldMetStationsMap.htm
The temps a few years prior to 1951 (James Astill's chosen startpoint) are similar to those offered for the present. All that seems to have happened in the article, is that Astill has compared the minimum temperatures in the GISS record with today’s. A bit disappointing really.
I agree that much of the Arctic 'maroon' is extrapolation, but we do have some very northerly land instrumental observations going back to 1802 which show 2-3 times larger trend than over the globe as a whole. Very interesting warming in the 1920s-1930s also.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL044176.shtml
Sadly, behind a paywall. :-(
Ed.
There is a open access copy of the Wood et al. Arctic temperatures analysis here:
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/noaa_documents/OAR/PMEL/journal_articles/doi10_1029_2010GL044176.pdf
Ed.
I bought this week's Econonist to check out the Arctic feature. The 'climate change' saw appears in other articles as well.
Not a word about the veracity of the claims of warming; not the slightest concession that it may be bunkum. There's a half-page advert inviting high policymakers to join a conference on the 'warming arctic' chaired by the author of the Economist report with a starting premise that AGW is real. Tut.
The Economist shouldn't be taking the stats on trust: there's evidence of data-fiddling by the academics: http://endisnighnot.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/giss-strange-anomalies.html
Either that or I have been interned at the MM asylum for mad climate scientists.
May be you want to join the discussions and replies to my comment here:
http://www.economist.com/node/21556802/comments#comments
I have replied to a couple of them, but it's sunday and sunny here and it's getting tired.
No wonder the Economist steered clear of the Antarctic, as it is soooo far away and the record of temperature decrease and accumulation of snow and ice is soooo off message for the Warmist dogma.
Brent Hargreaves:
"Econonist?" Or "Econanist?"
As well as the main leader and special section on the Arctic, there were also articles on "Green Growth" and "Environmental Boundaries". Ecolarmist indeed.
Nowhere that I could spot was there any mention of dissenting views, alternatives, contrary evidence, etc..
+1 subscription which will not be renewed (the reminder arrived in the same post).