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 

Confronting Malicious Ignorance (1/2) - a look at Poptech's game

Another diversion, but so it goes.  My YouTube profile must be growing, as reflected by the creepy clowns crawling out of the woodwork to take pot shots at me, reminds me of some cheap zombie horror movie.

A favorite meme is: CO2 levels were greater in the deep distant past, as though that has anything to do with today's world and the reality of adding ~3 billion metric tons of CO2 on top of the natural flux into our climate system every month after month.  One would think Republican types would know all about accumulating compounding interest and what that can do to numbers in a hurry - it doesn't just work that way in the financial world.  Why they ignore such simple rational fundamentals, is beyond me.

Another favorite, goes like this:

CC writes:  

Great so you object.  Now do you have any objective evidence to support what you believe.

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Dude (I'll going to start using the generic Dude for multiple YouTube characters) writes: 

A lot, actually.

http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/co2climatehistory.php

Here's a small (but informative) collection of evidence. If needed, I can provide a lot more.

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CC writes:

All you folks seem to point to co2science, watts up with that, has it become your bible or something?  It's run by the Idso Clan who are paid spokesmen for Heartland Institute and ExxonMobil - it has been shown to dishonestly represent the science.  But that's all you got - and you refuse to look beyond your smug little certitude.

But, learning requires some times getting out and assessing the reality going down on this one and only planet of ours - that we depend on for everything.  A bit of healthy self-skepticism would go a long way too.

~ plus~

What about all the information and detailed explanations and the hundreds of referenced papers that are collected in there???

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter05_FINAL.pdf - 

also see:

Heartland Institute and its NIPCC report fail the credibility test 

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Climate Science Watch 

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/09/09/heartland-institute-nipcc-fail-the-credibility-test/

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Dude writes: 

The IPCC? You are really going to reference people who still believe in the hockey stick graph and a 97% consensus? OK.

Here's a lot more papers (1,350+):

www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html