
'Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice revealed - ljf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/01/precipitous-fall-in-antarctic-sea-ice-revealed
======
ljf
Previous article at thinning in the Antarctic:

‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/16/thinning...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/16/thinning-
of-antarctic-ice-sheets-spreading-inland-rapidly-study)

------
eloff
This is a sensationalist headline. If you look at the graph it's a precipitous
fall from the sea ice extent at a cherry picked point when it happened to be
at its greatest extent in the last 40 years. Comparing it to the average, it's
still the lowest of the last 40 years, but actually not that far from the
mean. It could even maybe be explained by normal variance. Now that's not to
say anything about man-made climate change, which I believe is a real threat,
but this data is not nearly as dramatic as it is made to seem.

Edit: Perhaps the actual study would be more significant, but the article
itself is very nearly vapid. With no talk about the variance, how am I
supposed to know how to interpret this specific deviation from the mean? Just
visually it looks like it could easily fit within the normal variation.

~~~
crispinb
The word 'precipitous' is a direct quote from the author, and is also in the
PNAS article abstract.

Whatever your problems with the original paper (if you've read it), you can
hardly fault The Graun quoting their source verbatim.

~~~
eloff
Yes, that would justify the headline, but not the uncritical reporting. Any
idiot looking at the graph can see the problem with choosing the last four
years as the time frame. It's cherry picking to make it seem like a bigger
deal than it is. Both scientists and journalists know better.

