On one level Mr Solomon’s claim is nothing more than egregious nonsense, but it is nonetheless worth looking at in order to see how cleverly the misdirection is perpetrated. (It is also worth looking at his article for no other reason than to see the somewhat unambiguous feedback provided to Mr Solomon by a certain Neven Acropolis.)

The Arctic Sea Ice Blog features a frequently updated set of links to relevant news articles. (Or should that be “arcticles”?) One of these recently linked out to a blog hosted by the Toronto Financial Post and written by the redoubtable Lawrence Solomon. The heading of the piece in question loudly and proudly proclaimed…

This guest blog was sent to me by Bill Fothergill, also known by his nom de plume billthefrog. It discusses and takes on the yearly fake skeptic tradition of misleading people into thinking all is fine because ice cover around the maximum (when viewed from above, of course, not from the side) is just as large or even larger than in year X. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Thanks, Bill!

When trying to separate reality from fantasy in such articles, it is essential to be able to discriminate between an objective statement of fact, and any untenable inference loosely based thereupon. Mr Solomon may be accurately quoting the facts when he states that the National Snow and Ice Data Centre figures shows the 14th April 2013 Arctic Sea Ice extent at 14.511 million square kilometres versus a paltry… wait for it… 14.510 million sq km on the same date in 1989. A reasonable question to Mr Solomon might be ...”Yes, and your point is?” Whilst those wishing to deceive themselves (e.g. Homo struthio) might be impressed by such figures, the more astute readers of this blog will be aware that the NSIDC only claims an accuracy of around 50 thousand sq km for their daily analysis algorithms.

Although words such as “straws” and “clutching” spring easily to mind, the key element at this stage in the misdirection is that stalwart servant of the devious – good old fashioned cherry picking. Anyone possessed of even a modicum of genuine scepticism would take a moment to look at a bit more than just two days worth of data out of a dataset spanning over 34 years. Whilst the tabular form of the data is perhaps obscure and difficult to wade through, when presented graphically it sends a clear and chilling message. (If a warming trend can send a chilling message!)

What Mr Solomon has cleverly done is to notice that the rate of decline in Arctic sea ice is at its lowest around April/May time, and that a statistical outlier – such as the 1989 results for April and May – can easily have a lower value than that currently being experienced. However, it is not overly surprising that Mr Solomon was aware of this possibility, as he penned a very similar article in 2010 . This earlier piece of work attracted the attention of his fellow Canadian blogger Deep Climate, and the rebuttal can be found here. It may have escaped my attention, but I don’t recall Mr Solomon making any retraction or correction to this earlier post in light of what was to subsequently follow. (One also wonders if he gets paid twice for recycling garbage.)

Contrary to what was implied in Mr Solomon’s 3 year old rather premature ejaculation (noun: sudden utterance or exclamation – look it up in a dictionary) the month of May 2010 experienced a monumental loss of ice and the following month – June – ended up with what is still a monthly record. Mr Solomon’s attempted prescience at that time proved to be especially faulty, as every subsequent month that year from July – November ended up occupying, at least temporarily, either 2nd or 3rd lowest position. As a final nail in the coffin, December 2010 went the extra mile and still holds the record low for the month. (As does January 2011.)

At this point, it is worth taking a moment to justify the claim made in a preceding paragraph that April and May of 1989 were statistical outliers. There are many ways to reveal such apparent anomalies in a dataset, and one visual technique (i.e. non-technical) is to perform a ranking exercise on the monthly average results and then apply some form of conditional formatting. This is a trivial exercise in Excel, and one of the built-in conditional formats produces a “heat chart” as shown in the following table…

Data source: NSIDC Monthly Arctic Sea Ice Extent The number shown for each month represents its ranking position, with a value of “1” representing the lowest average Arctic sea ice extent for each given month.

If the above is a bit too “busy”, a bespoke formatting regime can equally easily be applied. The same ranking profile is repeated below, but with the following colour coding…

Red = Lowest / Orange = 2nd / Yellow = 3rd / Light green = 4th / Dark green = 5th / Grey = range 6-10 / Blue = 11-15

When presented in formats such as the above, several noteworthy points should be visible even to the untrained eye.

As mentioned earlier, only two figures prior to 1995 have “lowest ten” status, namely the April and May figures for 1989 The May 1989 figure is even more of a stand out in that it has the lowest ranking (5th) prior to 2004 With the exception of 2011, the April/May figures since 2008 all share the characteristic of being significantly at odds with the rankings of the subsequent months of the year Of the 10 entries for April/May recorded between 2008 and 2012, no fewer than 7 have had higher monthly averages than their 1989 counterpart.

Rather sadly, Mr Solomon seems to have shot his bolt a tad prematurely yet again, as the 2013 April average came in at about 70 thousand sq km lower than the 1989 figure. He should, however, keep his pecker up, as the May average will indeed probably be higher than its 1989 equivalent, and he will thus undoubtedly be able to do a bit more recycling. From June onward though, things could get interesting this year.

(For those wishing to peruse the data themselves, the NSIDC has a variety of visual aids freely available to help appreciate the changes that are taking place. Two extremely useful examples are the Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph and the Browse Image Spreadsheet Tool . Both of these are excellent for providing an overall “big picture”, as opposed to the misleading minutiae that Mr Solomon is trying to peddle.)

Mr Solomon also chooses to refer to the Arctic Sea Ice Monitor which, he quite correctly informs us, is operated jointly by the International Arctic Research Centre (IARC) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). His observation that the 2013 figures were, for much of March and April, languishing above the most recent decadal average does at least have somewhat more substance. This is clearly visible in the diagram below.

However, Mr Solomon must know his readers well enough to realise that many (most? all?) of them will unconditionally accept his pronouncements without bothering to actually look at the data to which he refers. One is rather forced into that opinion as it would be a pretty clear “own goal” otherwise. Anyone with a functioning brain looking at the above chart, and its accompanying CSV file, can see that the decadal average minimum for the 1980’s was a shade over 7.3 million square kilometres versus a shade less than 3.5 million sq km for last year. Worryingly, given last year’s spectacular new record minimum, 2013 can be seen tracking very close to its immediate predecessor. If Mr Solomon thinks that this lends corroborative support to his frankly bizarre claim that there is no evident trend, then I would like a pint of whatever he is drinking. Please.

Presumably whilst inhabiting some part of the multiverse far, far removed from our own, Mr Solomon then offered the following sage observation…

Last year at this time – April 2012 — was also well-iced, showing the current comeback of the Arctic ice to have been no one-time wonder.

Given what subsequently transpired last year, it is frankly astonishing that Mr Solomon elected to even mention 2012. The final seven months of that year saw two monthly records (August and September) and four 2nd lowest average extents, with only November bucking the trend in 3rd lowest position. Those who take a closer look at the numbers than Mr Solomon appears to do will also have noticed that the average annual figure was also broken for the second year running. However, possibly the single most amazing result was the fact that the average extent for August 2012 would itself have ranked 4th lowest amongst the September figures. (Behind 2012, 2007 and 2011)

A further analysis technique that can be very useful in teasing out long term time series patterns is to look at the “highest attained rank” across each year. For example, September 2005 briefly set a record low, with 2006 subsequently slotting in as 2nd lowest. Although every subsequent year has finished with lower September figures, 2005 and 2006 would still retain highest rank scores of “1” and “2” respectively, as these were their year-end positions.

Again using the NSIDC extent figures, the “highest attained ranking” table looks like…

The clutch of green shading for April/May from 2008 onwards (except, as mentioned, for 2011) is clearly not reflected in the results for the remainder of the year. Neither is this behaviour unprecedented, as it is similar to that experienced in 1997-2001. Equally clearly, the record setting March-May numbers in 1989 failed to have any lasting significance.

What Mr Solomon has unwittingly demonstrated is the real Homo struthio approach to climate change. The scientific method necessarily involves an iterative technique based on the concept of “observation – hypothesis – prediction – test”. Mr Solomon and his ilk dispense with such time-wasting frivolities and instead adopt the far simpler “highly selective observation – infallible pronouncement – uncritical acceptance by the acolytes”.

Given the apparent trend reversal around April/May, one can certainly argue that there is an a priori case for a genuine sceptic to hypothesise a recovery. However, such a person (possibly mythical) would also be forced into the construction of an alternative hypothesis. This unpalatable alternative hypothesis is, of course, one in which the Arctic sea ice is nowadays left in a weakened state at the end of the annual melt/growth cycle. In such a hypothesis, it would be extremely susceptible to being spread out by the vagaries of wind and current for perhaps a month or two, but would then rapidly disappear once the melt season gets seriously underway. The reader is cordially invited to consider which opposing hypothesis is best supported by the ultimate arbitrator – the data.

Incontrovertible as these results seem (except to Mr Solomon) an even starker picture emerges if one looks at the sea ice area results.

The swathe of red across the 2012 row unambiguously demonstrates the continuing nosedive of Arctic sea ice levels. (N.B. The figures for February and October 2012 each equalled an earlier year.)

Another facet to Mr Solomon’s distortion of reality involves a really brilliant rhetoric device – misdirection linked to plausible deniability. The critical term to watch out for is the apparently innocuous word “today”. Mr Solomon winds up his article with …

We have had good records of the extent of Arctic ice only since 1979, when satellites began tracking it in earnest. Over those three decades and a bit, the ice extent has varied wildly. In the first decade tracked, the 1980s, the ice extent was much greater than today. Over much of the second decade – the 1990s — the ice extent was comparable to today. The third decade saw less ice than today. The only evident trend in the ice, as in the weather, is variability.

The innocent stooge in this piece of disingenuous nonsense is, as mentioned above, the word “today”. Were someone to use an expression such as “there are more cars on the road today than 20 years ago”, it is highly unlikely that they are referring to a specific 24-hour period. Mr Solomon can of course claim that he was indeed referring to a given 24-hour period, and that it is hardly his fault if his words are taken to mean something completely different. Some of us might beg to differ.

The final piece of irony in Mr Solomon’s article is the glaringly obvious self-contradiction that he has constructed. In one sentence we are told that…

Last year at this time – April 2012 — was also well-iced, showing the current comeback of the Arctic ice to have been no one-time wonder.

However, a few lines later we are given the reassuring news that…

The only evident trend in the ice, as in the weather, is variability.

So, there we have it. The Arctic sea ice is staging a prolonged comeback (well, two years) from a trend that he claims does not appear to exist. Well, I guess that proves it then.

Possibly the ice just seemed to disappear for a while as it was actually forced underwater thanks to the weight of all those polar bears that have been rapidly growing in numbers.