Articgate update

I posted about the ongoing saga of Harrison Schmitt’s creative interpretation interpretation of Arctic sea ice data, which has become known as “Articgate”, using Schmitt’s now-infamous spelling in one document. (See One small step for man…).

The best treatment I’ve seen of the situation so far, with many more no doubt to come, is Peter Gleick’s AOLHuffPo piece, Misrepresenting Climate Science: Cherry-Picking Data to Hide the Disappearance of Arctic Ice:

As the climate science continues to strengthen, and as the observational data around the world continue to accumulate, those who deny the reality or severity of human-induced climate change are getting increasingly desperate. As evidence piles up and as our weather worsens, their positions get weaker and weaker and their claims that the climate isn’t changing, or isn’t changing because of human actions get harder to support, their voices get more strident, and their language and vitriol get uglier.

…

In 2009, Harrison Schmitt, a former senator, astronaut, and self-described climate “denier” (and potentially the Energy Secretary to the new New Mexican governor), sent a paper to NASA riddled with long-debunked errors of science. Others have written about this paper, taking it apart error by error. But one particular mistake lies at the heart of this week’s dust-up in New Mexico. In that paper Schmitt said:

“How long this cooling trend will persist remains to be seen; however, Greenland glaciers have been advancing since 2006, Artic [sic] sea ice has returned to 1989 levels of coverage, and snowy, cold winters and cool summers have dominated northern North America and Europe.”

See Peter’s article for the whole takedown of this wildly wrong statement. One graphic he put together from NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) data so perfectly details what the Heartland Institute said in support of Schmitt that it should be the logo for all acts of data cherry picking: