Jennifer Marohasy

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Greenpeace Leader Admits Ice Sheet Probably Won’t All Melt

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  2. SJT says

    Wrong. Reporter didn’t understand the claim, and conflated ice cap to ice sheet.

    http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/08/shoddy_journalism_from_stephen.php

    Read this passage (from a Greenpeace news story):

    A recent NASA study has shown that the ice cap is not only getting smaller, it’s getting thinner and younger. Sea ice has dramatically thinned between 2004 and 2008. Old ice (over 2 years old) takes longer to melt, and is also much harder to replace. As permanent ice decreases, we are looking at ice-free summers in the Arctic as early as 2030.

    They say you can’t be too thin or too young, but this unfortunately doesn’t apply to the Arctic sea ice. Polar bears are the first to suffer from it, but many other species could be affected as well.

    Is this passage about:

    A: the Greenland ice sheet

    or

    B: Arctic sea ice

    If you answered “A”, then you may be Stephen Sackur, presenter of the BBC’s HARDtalk, who, despite the repeated references to “sea ice”, decided that Greenpeace was saying that the Greenland ice sheet would melt by 2030. He then ambushed Greenpeace’s Gerd Leipold in an interview, claiming that the passage was “plainly misleading” (See Youtube video). Sackur compounded his error by only reading out one sentence from the passage: “As permanent ice decreases, we are looking at ice-free summers in the Arctic as early as 2030.”, thus not giving Leipold a chance to explain what the passage was about. Leipold agreed that Greenland wasn’t going to melt by 2030 and that if that is what the Greenpeace story had said, then it was a mistake.

    Needless to say, the global warming denial community seized on this with numerous stories on how Greenpeace admitted to being big fat liars — Michael Tobis has compiled a list along with more details.

    I emailed both Sackur and HARDtalk four days ago, asking if they would make a correction and I have received no response. Nor has HARDtalk posted my comment left here. In the meantime Greenpeace has added this clarification to their story.

  3. hunter says

    SJT,
    Now who are we going to beleive?
    The reports of more ice in the Arctic, or the computer geeks who have made a good living projecting the AGW apocalypse?
    Greenpeace was wrong either way, no matter if they are talking about Greenland or the Arctic.
    AGW seems to creat a zombie like effect on its believers: no matter how discredited, no matter how many times the apocalypse keeps failing to happen, the true belivers jsut keep schlepping along.
    Greenpeace is simply lying now, as they have for decades.
    It is obvious the interview was about the Greenland ice sheet, the Greenpeace stooge knew it was about the Greenland ice sheet, and Greenpeace can try and memory hole this all they want, but they will still be deliberately misleading people.

  4. SJT says

    The interview was about Greenland, but the quote was about the sea ice. The selective quoting gave him no context to go on so the error could have been pointed out.

    “AGW seems to creat a zombie like effect on its believers: no matter how discredited, no matter how many times the apocalypse keeps failing to happen, the true belivers jsut keep schlepping along.”

    The process is only just starting. It will play out over a few centuries, but by the time there is undeniable evidence even for the deniers, it will be too late to do anything.