New Arctic study flawed

There has been a flurry of stories recently about the Arctic "reversing a 2000 year cooling trend" and that temperatures are "higher than at any time since 1 BC" - no emotive language there, you will note (source). The WWF has weighed in with a similar report, see here.

But once again, it appears that there is more to these reports than meets the eye:

The new study claims to show “human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that now rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C.,” according to a September 3, 2009 article by the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin. The study will appear in the September 3, 2009 online version of the journal Science. The lead author was Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S. Kaufman.

The Washington Post also saw fit to gave prominent play to the environmental group World Wildlife Fund's new dire Arctic study claiming a scary global warming caused “transformation” of the Arctic. (The study is getting the alarmist media promote. See: USA Today: 'Arctic temperatures hit 2,000-year high' - But Andrew Revkin of NYT has much more balanced coverage of the study.) The Post article on the new Arctic “Hockey Stick” completely glossed over years of contrary data and instead mostly gave the authors a scrutiny free ride. (Eilperin also misspelled the name of one scientist she quoted.)

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot, “This looks like this week's "Hockey Stick" including many of Mann's collaborators.”

Not only that, but the study appears to contradict a whole list of earlier studies, none of which you will have heard about, because none of them fit the alarmist agenda. But thankfully, here is one that does fit that agenda - and it's all over the papers like a rash.

Read it here.