IPCC Catastrophe Fantasy-Fest…Scientist Prof. Mojib Latif Now Claims Half Of Both Poles Melted Since 1979!

Lately we’ve seen how leading IPCC scientists have been ignoring real data and presenting instead fantasized catastrophe scenarios as the real facts.

Global temperatures, they claim, are rising faster (in fact they haven’t risen in 15 years), sea level rise is accelerating (in fact it is decelerating), and storms are increasing (when in fact they have been decreasing). Yet, despite the recent flurry of hysterical claims, policymakers are no longer listening anymore. In Doha they simply brushed them aside and pushed off the whole process yet another year – this for the 19th time in a row.

So what are climate scientists to do?

The answer: exaggerate even more scenarios, like polar ice melt. At least that’s what leading IPCC scientist Prof. Mojib Latif of the GEOMAR Heimholtz Centre for Ocean Research appears to have done. Just ignore the real measurements and make up your own scary story. And because you are a renowned climate scientist, hapless, lazy journalists will automatically believe everything you say.

Half of the polar ice area has melted in the last 30 years

Prof. Latif’s latest scare fantasy is reported by journalist Heinrich Pantel of the Kieler Nachrichten here. He reports, quoting Latif (emphasis added):

‘Whatever our grandparents and parents blew into the atmosphere is still there today.’ The problem here is: ‘The climate reacts slowly.’ It could take decades before we feel the full force of our actions.

The speaker [Latif] referred to the retreat of the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Since the first satellites in space have enabled precise measurements, it is known that the ice area at the poles has decreased by almost a half over the last 30 years.”

Half of the ice area has disappeared at the Arctic and Antarctic poles? That’s what the Kieler Nachrichten reports, based on a presentation by Mojib Latif. Who cares anymore what the real facts are – just say whatever shocks the audience and readers at hand. None of them are going to look up the true data anyway.

At the rate suggested by the Kieler Nachrichten, who we assume quoted Latif correctly, the remaining half of the ice at the poles will likely disappear over the next 30 years – if not sooner should the warming indeed be accelerating. Moreover, if half of the polar ice area has disappeared, wouldn’t sea levels be rising something like 100 times faster?

Sloppy science communication – irresponsible journalism

This is yet another classic example of both sloppy science communication by an IPCC scientist, and irresponsibe and negligent journalism by Pantel and the Kieler Nachrichten. Any journalist, who had even posessed just an inkling of knowledge about climate science, would have immediately known something was amiss here. Fact-checking? What for! Journalist Heinrich Pantel just accepted “expert” Latif’s nonsense as the Holy Gospel truth.

To be fair to Prof. Latif, it’s possible that the hapless journalist just got the facts all mixed up and thus completely misinformed his readers.

Unfortunately this has become the norm of science communication in Germany.

And so one should not wonder that many German citizens and policymakers have become hopelessly hysterical on the climate issue. And we should not be surprised that more and more readers are turning their backs on the print media and opting instead for information from blogs.

New: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00373.1