A post from Tony Heller (aka Steve Goddard), on his Real Climate Science blog (aka The Deplorable Climate Science Blog)
contains some good illustrations of how to mislead with graphs.
The post Massive Increase In Arctic Ice Reflects The NASA Increase In Fraud
claims that an increase in global warming since 2012 in GISTEMP contradicts the claim of a recent slowdown in warming, and that this shows NASA are engaging in fraud.
In this post Heller is suggesting that this doubling of global warming contradicts an article by John J Fyfe et al,
Making sense of the early-
2000s warming slowdown which claimed there had been a slowdown in the rate of warming between 2000 and 2014.
He demonstrates his argument with reference to a couple of graphs from the Wood For Trees site,
and I'll follow suit by demonstrating the problems using the same site.
Graph 1
The first graph shows 5 year rolling average temperatures since 1995, and has labels indicating there has been no warming in satellite data,
but rapid warming from NASA.
Nothing surprising here, some satellite data shows rather less warming this century than terrestrial data sets.
Heller assumes RSS 3.3 is reliable and there must be a mistake in all the data sets that shows quicker warming, including RSS 4 and UAH 5.6.
What is odd is that he chooses to only show data for land, rather than the more usual combined land and ocean.
As far as I can see the reason he's only showing land temperatures is because over this period RSS
is showing less warming over land than over the oceans.
The main problem is with Heller's claim that Satellites also show that there has been no warming over land since 2000.
The problem being that this is a false claim, as he could have easily seen if he'd only added the trend line to the graph.
RSS has been warming since 2000 over land - at a rate of 0.83 °C / Century (up to August 2016).
Certainly a lot less than the trend for GISS, but not no warming.
This is presumably the reason Heller prefers to show a rolling 5 year average.
It obscures what's been happening the last few years.
Here's what the RSS land temperatures look like with a 12 month rolling average.
The second graph is used to illustrate the main claim in the article:
Undeterred by facts or science, Mann's buddy Gavin Schmidt at NASA says global warming doubled since 2012,
during the Michael Mann hiatus and remarkably concurring with Obama's second term in office.
Here's the graph used by Heller to illustrate this egregious doubling of warming.
I've no idea what Heller means by doubling the warming, and I doubt NASA made such a claim.
If he means the anomaly has doubled since 2012, that would be true if you only consider the trend line, but it's only doubling relative to the chosen base line.
If he means the rate of warming has doubled he'd need to say what rate he was comparing it with.
The rate of warming since 2012 is far more than twice the overall warming rate.
But all of this is irrelevant when you consider we are only talking about four and a half years!
But the real problem here is the way Heller uses this brief period of rapid warming to imply NASA's data is fraudulent as it doesn't agree with the claimed slowdown.
Logically there is no contradiction with a slower rate of warming between 2000 and 2014, and a rapid rate of warming between 2012 and 2016, as this graph illustrates.
But the stupidest part of this claim is that he doesn't check the claim that NASA the rapid warming
shown by NASA by comparing it with other data sets.
The rate of warming NASA shows since 2012 is indeed staggering, 10.2 °C / Century.
This would be very alarming if it wasn't for the fact that it's only for a very short time and mostly caused by ending with an El Niñ'o.
But every other data set you look at shows very similar levels of warming - if NASA is wrong so are all the others.
And by others I include the supposidly reliable RSS -
RSS version 3.3 shows a warming rate of 9.7 °C / Century since 2012 - almost identical to NASA.
If, as Heller claims, NASA's warming since 2012 contradicts the claim that there was a slowdown since 2000,
then by his own logic the rapid warming shown by RSS since 2012 contradicts Heller's own claim that there was no warming in the satellite data since 2000.
Either Heller never bothered to check his claims by comparing other data, or more likely he did check
but found the results inconvenient and decided to ignore it.
It has now been conclusively proved that global warming is not a problem.
The science is settled.
That at least is the impression Piers Corbyn came away with from a recent 2 day conference in London.
The amazing international parade of excellent Presentations from highly qualified and informed scientists and researchers in meteorology,
astrophysics and other professions in Meteorological production and academia
proved beyond a shadow of doubt that the man-made climate change story is a pack of lies and
delusional nonsense both in general terms and in every specific field of claims involving temperatures,
sea levels, ice and weather extremes.
He goes on to say (in red)
... no honest scientist can now come forth with any evidence that the Climate Change story is
anything other than a heap of POLITICALLY DRIVEN delusional nonsense and fraud.
Fortunately I am not not a scientist, honest or otherwise, so can talk about the evidence.
New Dawn
The conference was called The New Dawn Of Truth which sounds like it's either a new age magazine or the latest neo-fascist party.
with a logo that could apply to either.
(As far as I can see, there's no relation with the New Dawn magazine.)
The two day conference was put on by an organization calling itself the Independent Committee on Geoethics,
whose members include Christopher Monckton.
It's surprising this revolutionary conference hasn't received more attention on skeptical sites -
Watt's Up With That carried one story about it (written by Christopher Monckton, a founding member of the committee),
but with a disclaimer from Watts:
While I carry this story on WUWT for informational purposes,
that should in no way imply that I endorse the topics of the conference itself or the speakers.
But since then there's only been an oblique reference in this post,
where he says that on seeing a couple of the papers I knew then I would not attend this conference, even if invited.
This post did not go down to well with one of the other presenters at the conference, Roger Tallbloke.
Piers Corbyn's Contribution
Corbyn's presentation - The total failure of the ManMade Climate Change story.
has a slide show here.
There's also a video of his 20 minute lecture which doesn't add much to the slides.
Considering the promises of the title it's all rather disappointing - nothing new at all.
Just the same arguments he's been putting forward for years and mostly the same slides,
not even updated to reflect the fact it is now 2016.
However, it does give me an excuse to comment on a few of Piers Corbyn's claims.
Self Promotion
Around a quarter of the slides (and half the lecture) are about how good Corbyn's WeatherAction is at forecasting the weather.
He's implying that this proves CO2 is not responsible for climate change.
That's because his forecasting relies on the claim that solar activity controls the weather - and therefore is the only factor that controls the climate.
But his logic is wrong.
Even if his forecasts were accurate it would not prove that solar activity was the cause of the weather.
Corbyn keeps his methods a closely guarded secret, but they include factors other than solar activity.
Unless he publishes his research there is no way of knowing how much his success is due to solar factors.
Even if solar activity could be used to predict weather, it would not prove that the sun controls the climate.
Climate and weather are very different things.
Even if the sun does have an effect on the climate (it probably does), this does not mean that CO2 has no affect on the climate.
Moreover, I've yet to see any convincing evidence from Corbyn or anyone else that he can predict the weather,
especially not to the level of confidence he claims.
The bulk of his claimed accuracy is just confirmation bias - remembering the times when he's got something correct,
but forgetting all the times he's been wrong.
Thus he has slides confirming his prediction of heatwaves last month (August 2016), his prediction that July 2012 would be very wet,
the Great Storm of October 2013, and the exceptional cold of December 2010.
But they make no mention of his failures - that December 2011 would be exceptionally cold (it was a degree above average),
that May 2012 would be one of the coldest in 100 years (the month as a whole had average temperatures),
that February 2014 would be one of the driest in 100 years with drought developing in the South (it was one of the wettest)
that August 2014 would likely be the hottest on record (it was the only month that year to be below average).
Most of these he predicted with greater than 80% confidence, sometimes as much as 95%.
(All the above are forecasts for the UK.)
Even his claimed successes on closer examination are not always the spot-on successes he implies.
Take his forecast for July 2012 (slide 53).
The headline in the slide is The Apocalyptic deluges of July 2012 were well captured in WeatherAction DETAIL 45-75d ahead.
July was certainly wet, twice as much rainfall as average - but the forecast makes more specific claims.
Rainfall likely to be (90% confidence) wetter than July 2007 in England and Wales
and in the 12 wettest Julys in 247 years of records since 1786.
Wettest or in 4 wettest Julys in 100 years in SE England.
Rainfall for England and Wales July 2007 was 137.9mm, July 2012 was 120.7mm.
July 2012 was the 33rd wettest July in the England and Wales 247 year record.
July 2012 was the 13th wettest July in the 100 year SE England set.
What Piers Corbyn fails to do is provide any statistical analysis that his results are better than chance,
let alone the claimed 85% accuracy made from months in advance.
The closest thing to actual evidence is a single paper which he claims showed significant skill.
The problem is that this paper, by Denis Wheeler, failed to show any significant skill.
In particular it looked at a two year period of forecasts for storms in the UK,
and failed to show a statistically significant correlation between the forecasts and actual storms over winter months.
Cycles
In several slides Piers talks about cycles influencing the weather.
These cycles are claimed to come from the sun and the moon, but his evidence is scarce and the various cycles presented are contradictory.
The sun has an 11 year sun spot cycle and this is thought to have some influence on the climate,
but according to Piers it's the 22 year Hale cycle that matters more,
and this is modulated by a lunar cycle every 9.3 or 18.6 years. (Slide 17)
On slide 18 he explains how this leads to a 132 - 133 year cycle, corresponding to how these two cycles interact.
He explains that 6 x 22 = 132, and 7 x 19 = 133.
This at least makes some sense; if the sun and moon affect climate then there might be a corresponding beat when both are at there strongest.
Except he's already said the lunar cycle is 18.6 years, not 19, so there should be a peak every 130 years, not 133 as he claims.
This wouldn't be much of a problem if we were only talking about approximate lengths of time,
but Corbyn is claiming an exact period - or at least his only evidence is the fact that a short sequence of UK summer flooding
repeated a pattern exactly every 132 years.
But then he starts talking about an approximately 60 year cycle (slides 24 and 25),
which he also claims is governed by the same solar and lunar cycles.
You cannot fit a 60 year cycle into a 132 year cycle and claim that both are governed bhy the same two factors.
It also means that the 60 year cycle is not in step with the 11 or 22 year solar cycle.
If one 60 year cycle starts when the sun is at solar maximum, the next will start when the sun is at its minimum.
The only evidence for these cycles is a pair of graphs showing rises in temperature happening approximately 60 years apart -
except the trend lines appear to have been stuck on in order to confirm the 60 year cycle.
Even then there isn't much consistency.
In the graph showing USA temperatures for example, there is a claimed warming peak in 2002/3 (based on just 5 years of data),
but the previous peak happened 70 years earlier.
From slide 24 - Attributed to JD'Aleo Sept 2008.
Piers Corbyn explains how he gets a 60 year cycle from the solar and lunar cycles on slide 24 using this equation,
B - n - 2H,
where n is twice the inverse of the Lunar nodal Retreat rate, and H is half Z.
Z = 1 / Sunspot period = 1/11.1 /yr.
(Why he didn't use Z rather than 2H I don't know.)
Inverting B gives his ~58 year cycle.
There's no explanation as to why this equation makes any physical sense -
it looks like he simply played around with equations until he got the result he wanted.
Possibly the explanation is on slide 32 when he says:
Things are not always what they seem!
In Physics Drawing a diagram or writing an equation does not mean that you are showing something real
It's Cooling
It is one of Corbyn's main claims that we have entered a new mini-ice age, or a period of global cooling.
That is he doesn't just claim there was a pause, he's claiming there's been actual global cooling.
But obviously he provides no evidence to support the claim, and is very vague as to when he thinks this started.
So what we get is lots of strong assertions.
Sometimes these are predictions of imminent cooling Solar Activity Predicts Major COOLING (slide 36),
other times he's claiming there has been actual cooling -
Real temperatures are falling as CO2 warmist models rise (slide 47),
BUT Whatever they do, even with 'new' data the WORLD IS COOLING while CO2 still rises (slide 48),
The problem is all these claims are based on meaningless time scales producing insignificant cooling.
For example on slide 38 he claims there was cooling between 2007 and 2013.
Any cooling over that period would be indistinguishable from noise.
In any event he's wrong - all datasets including satellite data show a warming trend from 2007 to 2013.
Now that we have all of the Satellite data and two of the surface data sets for August,
I'll post a brief update to my ongoing prediction series, rather than wait till the end of the month for HadCRUT.
Anomalies for 2016 (1981 - 2010 base period)
With the exception of RSS 3.3 all data sets have shown an increased anomaly for August.
An interesting point is that with August UAH beta 6 has now beaten its record for warmest consecutive 12 month period.
The anomaly for the last 12 months have been 0.496 °C, compared with the previous record set at the end of 1998 of 0.482 °C.
This means that all datasets are showing the world as having just had its warmest 12 months on record.
But what about the all important calendar year?
Forecast for annual anomalies relative to previous record year
The forecast for the two surface sets has increased slightly, all of the satellite sets have decreased slightly.
The two cool satellite sets are edging close to the 1998 value.
UAH beta 6 is only now forecast to beat 1998 by 0.03 °C.
Forcast probability of beating previous record
A very slight drop in probability for the two cool satellite sets, 86% for RSS 3.3, 76% for UAH beta 6.
All other sets that have posted August values are greater than 99%.
Continuing to look at UAH beta 6, as it's the least certain and undoubtedly gain the most attention if it doesn't beat the record (thus proving there is no global warming!).
The average of the first 8 months of 2016 is slightly less than that for 1998.
(0.566 °C verses 0.573 °C)
To beat the 1998 record the remaining 4 months will need to average more than 0.315 °C per month, slightly more than the last 4 months of 1998 which averaged 0.3025 °C.
Here's the comparison between 2016 and 1998, with the dashed line showing the average needed for 2016 to equal 1998.
Comparison of UAH beta 6 for 1998 and 2016
For comparison, here's the older version of UAH, which looks almost certain to beat the record.
Piers Corbyn has given the world his thoughts on Professor Brian Cox, after his discussion with Senator Malcolm Roberts.
In what Piers describes as Hot News on his website he mentions a must watch video, showing
Piers Corbyn Video trashing lies on TV by Brian Cox the Climate Conspiracy theorist.
What I found amusing about this, is Piers Corbyn using conspiracy theorist as an insult.
Piers Corbyn who writes things like
THE REASON is that the CO2 CON - the false and fraudulent theory of Man-made Climate change is VITAL IDEOLOGICAL GLUE which holds together the deindustrialisation and asset-stripping of the UK, USA and EU under the 'green' rampant #WallStreet globalisation agenda;
Which forces up food and fuel prices worldwide under CO2 taxes, handouts for stupidity like wind farms and burning food for biofuels in the name of saving the planet;
Which boosts the failing #WallStreet multi-national corporations and their agents Obama and Clinton and Blairite-Cameron 'Labour'-Tories back up into world-plunder under cover of green happy-clappy 'SaveThe Planet' Agenda 21 and all the NewSpeak trade deals and local, regional, national and international diktats #EU-#UK-#TTIP-#EUETS and the list goes on.
The about page of Windows on the World insists it doesn't present conspiracy theories - Windows on the world only reports news backed up with facts. We constantly prove that the mainstream are spreading conspiracy theories.
But includes videos with titles such as:
False Flag Terror in Europe
Jo Cox MP Death, EU Remain Blairite Coup
Saudi and Israeli funding of 911
Here's the video.
Piers doesn't mention any conspiracy he thinks Brian Cox is theorizing about,
though he does claim there is an agenda to redistribute wealth,
whilst the host claims the people have been brainwashed,
and says it's a very well manufactured scam, that's been engineered for nefarious ends
and claims there are well orchestrated puppets in place.
You have to read the Weatheraction page to find out why he thinks Brian Cox is a conspiracy theorist (Corbyn's emphasis).
Piers says:
This vid exposes explicit lies on observed science by Brian Cox the
Climate Conspiracy theorist who supports the man-made Climate Change (conspiracy) theory.
This requires that CO2 controls world temperatures - the opposite of fact -
and that Man's CO2 (4% of total CO2 flux) dominates nature (96% of CO2 flux).
The required unknown mechanism whereby termites and other natural producers of CO2 follow Man's production
is a conspiracy theory of nature more crazy than any conspiracy theory ever cooked-up.
If anyone knows a conspiracy theory more insane we would like to hear it!
Indeed, I'm struggling to think of a more insane theory!
The conspiracy Piers is accusing Brian Cox of theorizing about would appear to be
The required unknown mechanism whereby termites and other natural producers of CO2 follow Man's production ...,
(always with the termites!).
My guess at what Piers is trying to say here is that it requires a conspiracy of nature to increase its CO2 emissions in line with human emissions.
But elsewhere Corbyn has made similar absurd arguments with contradictory claims.
2. That even if this were true Man's only 4% contribution of total CO2/
'greenhouse' gases dominates and nature's 96% conspires that all
other CO2 etc from termites (10x that of Man), volcanoes, rotting plants,
cow-fart etc stay constant as a whole, leaving Man's 4% in charge.
So the conspiracy is either that natural CO2 emissions follow human emissions, or stay constant.
All of this is based on the assumption that for humans to have caused the rise in atmospheric CO2
it is necessary for our 4% of emissions to dominate natures 96%.
In the real world none of this is true.
An increase in emissions of 4% is all that is required to produce the observed rise in atmospheric CO2,
and you do not need a conspiracy to explain why natural emissions remain more or less constant whilst human emissions increase.
The Science Bit
To put some figures on this, I'll refer to the latest IPCC report - (WG1 AR5, Chapter 6),
(all figures expressed as gigatons (Gt) of CO2).
Current human emissions are 32.6 Gt per year.
(Fossil Fuels and Cement 28.6 Gt, Land Usage 4 Gt).
Natural emissions total 728.5 Gt per year.
(Oceans 287.7 Gt, Freshwater 3.7 Gt, Respiration and Fire 435.6 Gt, Volcanoes 0.4 Gt, Rock Weathering 1.1 Gt)
Hence humans are responsible for 4.3% of all CO2 emissions (as admitted by Corbyn).
Atmospheric CO2 has increased from around 2160 Gt to 3040 Gt since the Industrial Era, a rise of 880 ± 37 Gt.
It's this 880 Gt we are concerned with.
At the current rate it would have taken humans 27 years to account for all of the rise in atmospheric CO2.
The IPCC estimates that total human emissions of CO2 over the Industrial Era (since 1750) are
1376 ± 110 Gt.
Hence humans have emitted more than enough to account for all the rise in atmospheric CO2.
The carbon emitted by humans that is not currently in the atmosphere is mostly residing in the oceans.
According to the IPCC CO2 in the Oceans has increased by 569 ± 110 Gt.
The bottom line of is there's no need to invoke any magical conspiracy to explain the rise in CO2.
On the contrary, if Piers Corbyn thinks the rise of CO2 is not caused by human activity,
he needs to explain where all the CO2 he admits humans have released has gone to.
He then needs to explain where the observed extra CO2 in the atmosphere has come from.
All the data sets have released for July so it's time for another look at how the statistical predictions are coming along.
This month I've added BEST to the data sets, and I've been trying to improve the appearance and colors of my graphs, but it's still a work in progress.
Here's what 2016 looks like so far, month by month.
(All temperatures have been rebased to the 1981 - 2010 period.)
July saw a pause in the rapid drop of the last few months, with most sets either rising slightly or dropping by only a small amount.
Here's how the projection of the expected annual temperature has changed for each set -
as always this is expressed as the difference to the previous record.
Each data set is continuing to slowly drop.
It's interesting to see how much of a split there is between the various sets.
The two hot satellite sets (the old non-beta UAH, and the new RSS) continue to be the sets projected to beat the record by the largest amount, whilst the two cold satellite sets are projected to beat the record by the least amount.
All of the terrestrial sets are between these two.
Again it's important to remember these are showing the difference between the expected 2016 value and the previous record, which is different for each dataset.
In particular the satellites are compared to the exceptional 1998 value, whilst the surface data is compared with 2015.
The changing probabilities of each set beating their respective record years are shown here:
UAH beta 6 is down to 78% and RSS 3.3 is at 90%. Both down 2 percentage points.
Others remain close to certain, with HadCRUT now at 97% and NOAA at 99%.
As always, I don't agree with these probabilities.
In particular I think it's very unlikely that UAH beta 6 will beat the record.
An interesting point regarding UAH beta 6 is that the average for the first 7 month of 2016
is almost exactly the same as the average of the first 7 months of 1998.
0.584 °C for 2016, compared with 0.580 °C for 1998.
Thus the next 5 months will have to be cooler than the last 5 months of 1998 for UAH beta 6 to not beat the record.
Here's the comparison of 2016 to 1998 along with a dashed line representing the average temperature required over the rest of the year for 2016 to equal 1998.
UAH can only drop slightly from July before it fails to beat the record.
This will depend on
Comparisons with Other Record Years
The assumption is that 2016 will most resemble 1998 as far as changes over the year are concerned.
Both were strong El Niño years, and show a very strong spike in temperatures especially in the satellite records.
Here's what all the different data sets did during the last great El Niño year of 1998.
(All anomalies based on the 1981 - 2010 period.)
To make this clearer here's 1998 showing the average of the 4 surface sets, and the 4 satellite sets.
One obvious point is that the satellite data was much higher throughout the year than the surface data.
This illustrates just how hot 1998 was in the satellite records.
What's also interesting is the way the surface data drops so quickly in September, whilst the satellite data shows an even bigger drop in November.
So how well would this forecasting method have worked in 1998?
Using only data up to 1998, this is how the margin graph would have looked for 1998.
I'm surprised how good this looks.
Note that the figure for December is the final result, not a projection.
Here's how the probabilities looked.
Less surprising given how warm the start of 1998 was by July all data sets would have been near certain of beating the record.
Lets do the same with 2010.
This was another El Niño year, though not a strong one.
It broke the record in all the surface data, and produced another massive spike in satellite data, but not enough to beat 1998.
I'd say this would have been a good set of forecasts taken from July say, the two sets that were given little chance failed to beat the record, the one set (NOAA) with a strong chance did beat the record,
and of the other five being given between around 40 - 75% chance, 3 did beat the record and 2 didn't.
Finally, if you haven't had a enough, here's last year, which was a record in all the surface data, and not a record in all the satellite data.
For all the data sets the forecast underestimated the annual temperature throughout the year,
with the July forecasts being around 0.1 °C below the actual value.
But the probability forecasts were not bad, with all the satellite data showing no chance by July,
and all the surface sets having greater than 70% chance of a record.
Tony Heller (aka Steve Goddard) is still obsessed with Professor Brian Cox, following the well publicized discussion with Senator Malcolm Roberts on Australian television.
So much so that he now wants to go to Australia to teach Cox a lesson.
The lead article Going Down Under on his website reads in full -
I’m thinking about heading to Australia in a few weeks, to help educate the clueless Brian Cox about climate and the scientific method. A lot of it will depend on being able to fund the trip, which will be expensive. What do you think?
Well, as he asked, what I think is he wants a holiday in Australia and wants his fans to help finance it.
But what I also think is he doesn't realize that Brian Cox is not Australian and flew out of Australia 5 day before Heller's post.
Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) that he's bought us the best-
A perfect and absolute blank!
This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out
That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell.
This has been dissected at Hot Whopper, and I don't have anything to add,
but I was intrigued by a typically Mittyesque anecdote he throws in for little reason.
Grockling All Over The World
I once saved the owners of the swank rent-a-suite megaship The World from losing a fortune when
her otherwise perfectly sane skipper had conceived the notion of sailing her through the North-West Passage,
and had sold them on the idea.
The World was lying in Fremantle at the time.
My lovely wife and I were spending a few days aboard.
We were grockling all over the ship when, by mistake, we stumbled into the skipper's day cabin,
where he and his brother officers were merrily laying plans to penetrate the North-West Passage.
By VirtualSteve - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8927159
To quote their own website:
The largest private residential ship on the planet,
The World is home to only 165 Residences.
Residents & Guests spend extensive time exploring the most exotic and well-traveled destinations,
and return onboard to a lifestyle that exists nowhere else on earth.
...
With only 165 individual Homes,
The World's Residents enjoy one of the most exclusive lifestyles imaginable.
Not only do Residents own their individual Residences, but collectively, they own the ship, ensuring that the experiences –
both onboard and off – are far beyond current luxury travel standards.
Monckton doesn't give a date for this story, nor does he explain how he came to be aboard this swank rent-a-suite megaship.
The most likely date is February 2012, when The World was in Fremantle and had planned to sail the Northwest Passage,
as this archive from the start of 2012 shows.
Given the exclusivity of the ship it seems reasonable to assume that Monckton was on board as a guest of one of the owners;
possibly Gina Rinehart, who had financed Monckton's controversial lecture tour of Australia the previous year.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
Monckton concludes:
The skipper took us up to the bridge and, with that faraway gleam in his eye that bespeaks the adventurer,
told us all about his idea.
I called up the University of Illinois' global and Arctic sea-ice data on the ship's computer
and gave the skipper a short lecture on the very few occasions over the previous century or two when the
North-West Passage had been open.
The Arctic, I said, was unpredictable,
wherefore he should not be too ready to join the True-Believers in subscribing to every barmy but
transiently fashionable dogma of the New Religion.
He saw at once that the thing was impossible and cabled the owners to tell them to think again.
Like most of Monckton's stories this seems highly implausible.
The idea that the captain of the ship would abandon a cruise that had been advertised over a year in advance
on the say-so of a single eccentric English man,
the idea that going through the Northwest Passage was the dream of a temporarily insane captain,
the idea that cancelling a planned excursion would save the owners any money, let alone a fortune.
(Bearing in mind the residents are the owners.)
But the most obvious problem with this story is that far from cancelling the planned journey, The World
successfully sailed through the Northwest passage, as planned 6 months after Monckton's interference.
Setting sail from Nome, Alaska, U.S. on 18 Aug 2012 and reaching Nuuk, Greenland on 12 Sept 2012,
the ship became the largest passenger vessel to transit the Northwest Passage.
The ship, carrying 481 passengers and crew, for 26 days and 4,800 nautical miles at sea,
followed in the path of Captain Roald Amundsen, the first sailor to complete the journey in 1906.
Here's a video of the attempt:
So how could Monckton have saved the owners a fortune persuading the captain to abandon the journey,
when it made the journey in any case?
It's possible everything Monckton said was true, but after the Captain cabled the owners to tell them to think again,
they told him to stick to the plan.
Or more plausibly the Captain was just humoring Monckton when he said the thing was impossible -
having realized this was the only way to get the Monckton to stop bothering him.
What's telling about Monckton is that four years later he's still telling this story, blissfully unaware that his meddling
made no difference to the fate of the World.
.JPG#/media/File:The_World_(in_Melbourne).JPG)
