Article: "Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor"

The link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aIe9swvOqwIY

"Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said."

You could call that a rather noticeable discrepancy. Having said that, such things do happen.

"The error, due to a problem called “sensor drift,” began in early January and caused a slowly growing underestimation of sea ice extent until mid-February. That’s when “puzzled readers” alerted the NSIDC about data showing ice-covered areas as stretches of open ocean, the Boulder, Colorado-based group said on its Web site." (Link is not mine, but has been left intact.)

Well, there's a lot there, so let's talk about this for a moment. First, due to sensor drift, the extent of the ice sheet was underestimated. In other words, they were saying it was smaller than it actually was. As I pointed out, this does happen. You could go further and call it entropy at work in that any mechanical device is going to have problems from time to time. Now that's very important to understand - any mechanical device is going to have problems from time to time. You just can't get around that one.

Having said that, this problem simply highlights another problem I wrote about earlier - the celebrities and their cause du jour. Some people, and I'm not only pointing at celebrities here, took these numbers, got on their soapboxes and screamed about the problem being far far worse than anybody thought.

That was when some of us "...puzzled readers..." told them that according to their own numbers, there was a problem somewhere. But this brings us right back to people who have an agenda or a cause du jour. They won't know enough about the entire situation to take a step back, look at the data, and say "Woah. That can't be right. These numbers can't be right."

To be fair, it was statistically possible for those numbers to have been accurate. But the odds of that being the case are roughly the same odds of a dump truck falling out of a cargo plane and crushing you. Frankly, I really don't think about that too much. I'm guessing you don't either. I'm much more worried about some of the idiots I've seen lately driving their cars. I'm much more worried about some idiot tailgating me on an icy road and him/her losing control and striking my vehicle. Or driving as if the roads were clear when they were snow-covered and treacherous. (This happened to me during our latest snowfall. He didn't strike the car, but he didn't miss it by much. But his car turned sideways and I thought he was going to hit us. That's what happens when you don't obey the rules of winter driving. Here's that link again: http://gregb1967.blogspot.com/2009/01/brrrrr.html )

So to recap, the numbers were wrong due to sensor drift. It does happen from time to time. But when people with an agenda or a cause du jour - who don't have in depth knowledge of what's going on - jump up and down and scream that the sky's falling, that's a problem. It's great that they're interested in the topic and are worried about it. Frankly, people should be concerned about this. It simply highlights what can go wrong when people know only enough to be dangerous about such things.