Arctic Sea Ice Scam

Ever been had? The Observer of July 26 under the engaging title Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide makes the following claims:

Photos from US spy satellites declassified by the Obama White House provide the first graphic images of how the polar ice sheets are retreating in the summer. The effects on the world’s weather, environments and wildlife could be devastating.

Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military…The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

Here are the images

We will show in this post that this is a hideous piece of lies and propaganda. It is very revealing since not only does it show the biased propagandizing of the Guardian/The Observer stable, but also demonstrates the crude and shameless progagandizing of the Obama Administration (which also confirms the case made in the post All who hate Me love Death that Obama was dissembling when he claimed that he wouldn’t interfere with science). We will show in this post, with additional evidence from the air and the ground, that the satellite pictures have been deliberately selectively cropped and chosen for maximum propaganda effect to mislead the public (and politicians, no doubt). It is akin to taking beach photographs of low tide one year and of high tide the following year, and putting them side by side in an argument about sea level rise. Put on the finishing touches about a Bush conspiracy and Obama’s openness and you are home and dry with something the Nazis would have been proud of.

Even the University of Alaska, Fairbanks felt compelled to comment:

Annual break-up of landfast sea ice off the coast of Barrow, Alaska received international media attention in July 2009 after the USGS made available high resolution-satellite imagery that show inter-annual variability in coastal ice conditions…However, unlike suggested by some, comparing summer ice conditions in July 2006 and July 2007 is not sufficient evidence to verify a trend.

In other words, all they show is that one year differs from another and no trend can be inferred. In the nicest possible way, this says that someone is up to no good here by distorting the science. Shame on the US Geological Survey for being prepared to become the mouthpiece of propaganda.