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  A new Olympic record for retraction of a denier talking point
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ContributorArmyDem 
Last EditedArmyDem  Aug 25, 2008 06:36pm
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News DateTuesday, August 26, 2008 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionThe gold medal goes to Steven Goddard of The Register. On Friday August 15, he published a scathing article, “Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered: There’s something rotten north of Denmark” attacking the National Snow and Ice Data Center plot of Arctic Sea Ice Extent (below) that I and pretty much everyone else on the planet use.



Based on some (mis)analysis too obscure for mortal men and women to follow, he concluded “The problem is that this graph does not appear to be correct”:

The Arctic did not experience the meltdowns forecast by NSIDC and the Norwegian Polar Year Secretariat. It didn’t even come close. Additionally, some current graphs and press releases from NSIDC seem less than conservative. There appears to be a consistent pattern of overstatement related to Arctic ice loss….

Unless you are a denier, you may not be surprised to learn the amateur denier was wrong and the country’s leading cryosphere scientists were right. But you might be surprised that Goddard issued an unequivocal retraction within days at the site of the original article:

[snip]

Kudos to Walt Meier of NSIDC for the rapidity with which NSIDC handled this. As he posted on Real Climate last Friday

NSIDC has worked with Mr. Goddard to get to the bottom of the issue … and as has been mentioned in the comments above, he has posted a correction. I thank Mr. Goddard for his cooperation in this matter.

[snip]

In any case, if you look at the graph, you’ll see the Arctic ice extent is shrinking perilously close to last year’s record. It should be an exciting few weeks to see whether the record gets beat. But again, what’s important isn’t from all year by year fluctuations, but the astonishingly fast decline in Arctic ice in the last few decades driven in large part by global warming.
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