BBC’s Failed ‘Fact Check’ of Daily Sceptic Report on Arctic Sea Ice

Being accused of “cherry picking” by an organisation that routinely catastrophises bad weather events is of course risible. Taking lessons from a state-reliant operation that can publish a recent story from a “science correspondent” that starts, “Climate change threatens to ‘call time’ on the great British pint”, is also laughable.

The 21-year high on January 8th was clearly identified as part of a number of short and long term trends, and in the third paragraph of the article it was noted that ”we must be careful not to follow alarmists down their chosen political path of cherry-picking and warning of climate collapse on the basis of individual events”.

It is evident that the BBC did little investigative work on the matter despite More or Less priding itself on checking statistics and data. Instead it relied on the usual ‘scientists say’, in this case Professor Julienne Stroeve.

The UCL “Earth Scientist” attempted to muddy the Arctic sea ice waters by suggesting the ice extent is thinner, but presenter Tom Colls had to admit, “the data is not available yet”.

If you pick a particular day, you might just be talking about the weather, states Colls. There is no correlation between winter sea ice extent and how much the ice will melt in the summer, added Stroeve.

What you see since 1979, continued Stroeve, is that the trend in Arctic sea ice is downwards for four decades. The overall decline in long term Arctic sea ice is very easy to see, adds Colls.

If you ‘cherry pick’ the date 1979, probably the high point for Arctic sea ice for almost a century, and draw a line to the present day, the cyclical trend is undoubtedly down. There was more ice around at the high point in 1979 than there is now, nobody disputes that.

If you are just after a simple political message of climate collapse to promote the Net Zero fantasy, further examination of the data will be unwelcome. But a more detailed review of the statistics gives a more realistic interpretation. According to recent work published by the Arctic scientist Allan Astrup Jensen.

The summer ice plateaued from 1979-97, fell for 10 years and then resumed a minimal downward trend from 2007. Jensen observes that either side of the 10 year fall after 1997, there have been minimal losses.

In fact using a four-year moving average, the trend has been slightly upwards over the last few years. The graph below is compiled by the investigative science writer Tony Heller and shows the recent stability of Arctic summer sea ice around the minimum recorded every September. A slight recovery from about 2012 can be clearly seen.