Arctic sea ice gone by 2015? A challenge to David Barber. « Climate Sanity

An Open Challenge to David Barber

I am concerned about climate exaggerations and the effect they have on public policy makers. It seems quite clear that David Barber was off the mark when he predicted that “this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time,” because neither the Arctic Ocean, the Arctic Basin nor the North Pole were ice free this past summer. The North Pole being ice free is not that unusual, and the entire Arctic was probably ice free a relatively short 7,000 years ago.

Now Barber has made the slightly longer term prediction that “The ice that has covered the Arctic basin for a million years will be gone in little more than six years.” I propose a friendly wager based on this prediction. I will bet David Barber $1000(US) that the ice covering the Arctic Basin will not be gone anytime before December 31st, 2015. The bet would involve no transfer of cash between myself or Barber, but rather, the loser will pay the sum to a charitable organization designated by the winner.

The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media » Politico’s Alleged Blunders on Climate Story:Science and Journalism Principles Allegedly Violated

Amidst the various commentaries laying into the Politico plundering, observations by Tom Yulsman, of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, deserve special mention.

Yulsman had a big “Thank you” for the Politico writer, albeit somewhat tongue in cheek: Describing the piece as a “gift,” Yulsman wrote that the article “will help make one of my class preps so much easier, because now I have a new and terrific example for my science writing class of how not to write about science (or politics, for that matter).”

Yulsman pointed to “three journalistic cardinal sins” in the Politico piece:

* “It seems that she did reporting to support a predetermined outcome - namely the ludicrous assertion that there is ‘growing’ evidence casting doubt on anthropogenic climate change.” He said Lovely “spoke only with political sources who would support her unsupportable thesis.”