Climate change in general, and polar ice in particular, is affected by so many factors that it is difficult to isolate the magnitude of the contribution made by each, and whether the contribution tends to increase or decrease warming. Among the things that we now suspect may contribute are earth wobble, solar flares, dust & soot, sun spots, deep ocean volcanic vents, cow farts, and the vast amounts of hot air emanating from Congress.
Watts Up With That, which bills itself as the “world’s most viewed site on global warming and climate change”, has up a new article by climate journalist Harold Ambler noting the fact that the Antarctic now has a record-breaking area of sea ice. The article itself is interesting, but one item from the comments section snagged my attention. It was posted by someone using “NZ Willy” as the identity assumed for purposes of posting their comment, which deals with the operational details of one or more of the Earth Observation Satellites (WikiPedia list is HERE). The main excerpt from the comment is as follows:
Just a brief reminder about the polarizing lens on the orbiting satellite. Before 2008 the Arctic ice extent charts showed an upwards bump on July 1st when the polarizing lenses were switched from Antarctic to Arctic mode — this was so that Arctic melt ponds would not be interpreted as open water. The reverse switch was on January 1st so was not evident on the charts because it was at the edge [of the chart]. Anyway, people complained about the bump so they decided to “improve” the chart by gradually turning the polarizing lens. This rapidly became carte blanche for turning the lens any way they wanted, and accounts for much of the symmetry seen nowadays — when the Arctic ice anomaly rises, the Antarctic anomaly falls, and so on. Today we see the Antarctic ice anomaly rising to record levels even as the Arctic ice anomaly is oddly dropping even as the ice edge is strong — this is because the Arctic ice concentration has dropped to about 75% – 80% all across the ice cap — because the melt ponds are all being interpreted as open water (see the washed out orange color on the ice concentration map). It’s just that they’ve (presumably) turned that polarizing lens all the way into Antarctic mode to report as low an Arctic ice area as possible -– which thus causes the reported Antarctic ice extent to skyrocket.
Astute readers will immediately have cause to wonder about the climate credentials of NZ Willy, as I did. So I undertook some investigation by means of several web searches, and I have concluded that, among all the contenders, the most likely identity of NZ Willy is:
1] Dr. William Gray, 84 year old Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, whose intimates may or may not call him Willy, and who may have deceived the world for all these years into believing that he WAS NOT from New Zealand;
2] Dr. Willie Soon, Astrophysicist and Geoscientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a Willie, but a Willie with no known connection to New Zealand, and;
3] some guy from New Zealand
Unless NZ Willy does the right thing and steps forward to reveal his true identity and qualifications, the veracity of the claims made in his post will be open to question by some. As for me, however, I have now added “Polarizing Weather Satellite Lens” to my list of the usual suspects.