by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

The record Arctic sea ice decline this year has predictably and deservedly received a fair amount of media attention.  Jonathan Leake of the Sunday Times recently penned an article on the impending sea ice record.  The bulk of the article was quite good, but at the end succumbed to the standard mainstream media practice of seeking “balance,” thus including some comments by John Christy.  Christy has become very reliable for arguing that anything and everything related to climate change probably just boils down to natural variability, as he recently told US Congress was the case with regards to the frequency of extreme weather events, contrary to the body of peer-reviewed scientific literature.

As we will see in this post, Christy once again misrepresented the body of scientific literature with regards to Arctic sea ice extent in his efforts to paint the Arctic sea ice death spiral as nothing out of the ordinary.

2012 vs. 1940

In Leake’s article, Christy was paraphrased as saying that there is

“…anecdotal and other evidence suggesting similar melts from 1938-43 and on other occasions.”

Christy’s comments to Leake via email slightly differed from Leake’s paraphrasing, as ...

Link to original article / Continue Reading...

Climate Progress is a blog dedicated to providing the progressive perspective on climate science, climate solutions, and climate politics.