Another study in miscommunication - Nature.com reporting on Karl et al. 2015

I want to make clear that I have a good deal of respect for Jeff Tollefson, on account of how often my searches lead to one of his articles, which are consistently clear and helpful.  I even think this article is fundamentally sound and helpful.  

However, there's one word that's an stellar example of "seepage" whereby scientists and science communicators unconsciously adopt the contrarian meme, rather than getting back to fundamentals and explaining what's happening to our global heat and moisture distribution engine.

Seepage, impacts of a chimera - Lewandowsky, Risbey, Oreskes study

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2015/09/seepage-impacts-of-chimera-lewandowsky.html

The paragraph had potential for an insightful learning moment, instead it plays right into the Republican campaign of confusion. 

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US agency’s updated temperature records suggest that global warming continues apace

Jeff Tollefson  -  June 2015  -  Nature.com

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-hiatus-disappears-with-new-data-1.17700

"An apparent pause in global warming (2) might have been a temporary mirage, according to recent analysis. Global average temperatures have continued to rise throughout the first part of the twenty-first century, researchers report on 5 June in Science¹.

That finding, which contradicts (1) the 2013 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is based on an update of the global temperature records maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The previous version of the NOAA data set had showed less warming during the first decade of the millennium. ...

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(1)  Contradicts what?

Karl had more information at hand then IPCC did.  It's about better information leading to better understanding and more accurate numbers.  

Isaac Asimov considers The Relativity of Wrong
http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2014/07/isaac-asimov-relativity-of-wrong.html

The physical reality is that it is exceedingly difficult to measure Earth's temperature with 100% coverage or accuracy, and while scientists are doing an amazing job and getting amazingly detailed, it'll never be enough for the contrarian hearted.  So, we allow malicious fraudster to rain contempt and slander on respectable professional humans doing their jobs, on account of the difficulty of their task.  It's vicious, mean spirited, and intended to make our public stupid.  While too many communicators unconsciously keep falling in line with their malicious misrepresentations. 

Karl et al. didn't contradict anything, it incorporated new information and offers another step forward in understanding and refinements, and it updates previous understanding, along with raising some new questions.  

NOAA temperature record updates and the ‘hiatus’

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/06/noaa-temperature-record-updates-and-the-hiatus/

A study in miscommunication - increasing Antarctic ice extent (is no) mystery!

While culling through YouTube videos for a project, I came across a NASA Goddard video that presented a text book example of a well meaning, but overly cautious scientist whose's awkward wording and omissions leads to more confusion than clarity.  It also highlighted one of my pet peeves - the lack of a coherent and memorable narrative to serve as a skeleton upon which to drape the many varied bits and pieces of information being presented.  

(Well look at what I just discovered!  Seems that fraudster and PR spinmeister Lord 1000Folly, Monckton's YouTube clone (who's been flooding YouTube with maliciously fabricated misrepresentations of climate science), also discovered this example of NASA's communication failings and does he have a field-day mocking scientists based on manipulating this very video's gross omissions: "NASA - The Mystery of Antarctic Cooling" (1/26/16) no I'm not linking to it.   2/17/16,1:45 PM)

A unifying concept, such as "Plate Tectonics" which created a real mental visualizing tool onto which the disparate bits and pieces of geologic knowledge fit seamlessly and became a comprehendible whole.  Perhaps a concept along the lines of our "Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine" subtitled "It's The Atmospheric Insulation Silly."  

In any event, this quote at 0:55 set me off. - Speaker: "The increase that we're seeing in the Antarctic ice extent is a little bit of a mystery…" 

Poor phrasing indeed.  Particularly since he never brought it back to explaining how scientists have been uncovering the various geophysical phenomena that have driven the increasing sea ice and solved the one time mystery.

Not confronting that meme and explaining why sea ice has been increasing, they reinforce what an unschooled person might assume and what the contrarian PR machine keeps feeding people.  Why, I wonder?  After all, it is a pretty clear and straightforward story.

I follow the short video in question by highlighting the pieces of information I'm familiar with; information that offers a coherent physical explanation for why all that extra sea ice has been forming, and why it's part and parcel of global warming's cascading consequences.  Items that were unjustifiably omitted from the video but that could have been included.  For supporting evidence I link to various splendid short videos and some articles that provide further details to this aspect of our climate engine.   

NASA | The Arctic and the Antarctic Respond in Opposite Ways