Oh, our poor beloved but beleaguered science advisor (and/or despised traitor -- not sure which yet) Anthony Watts, is being harassed by left-wing warmunazis on his very own site! Leave Anthony alone!
Dr. Watts has provided a justification for why he added poll options for 4M to 5M sq km of sea ice for a September minimum, and took out the 7M to 8M options, now that the sea ice extent has gone below 5M sq km (I still think a quick freeze is possible -- anyone who owns an ice cube tray should understand how fast these things can happen -- and that 7M is not out of the realm of the possible).
Well the possibility does exist that the final number will be somewhere between 4.0 and 4.5, where it didn’t seem likely a month ago, so adapting to the conditions isn’t a bad thing I guess. It’s like recalibrating your instrument in the field to measure lower values because those are the one coming in. Like I said I’ll be damned if I do, damned if I don’t so I may as well be damned for providing more options.
-- Dr. Watts PhD
Watts has chosen a wise course of action. The art of prediction is all about making a random guess where something's going to go, and then updating the prediction with real-world data after the event has happened. This is called "adapting and recalibrating". Contrast this with so called "climate models" that predict things in advance, and then once the grant cheque is cashed, they're not even updated. Scientists don't even care if a prediction from 5 years ago was correct or close or just plain wrong. They won't even try to change it. Scientists can't adapt; they're still sticking with their crackpot "warming" theories even though that cold day in Minnesota last winter proved AGW absolutely wrong forever. This is why I keep repeating that the only reliable prediction method is to wait for something to happen and then decide. If the coasts are going to be flooded and Greenland on fire in 2100, we have a good 90 years before we can even begin to start predicting whether those things will have happened.
It also shows just how unreliable predictions are when they're made in advance instead of in retrospect. Dr. Watts has a PhD in weatherman sciences. Who better to make predictions than a weatherman? It's their job. And if he can't do it worth a damn, how do you expect anyone else to be able to? Updating a prediction once it's already happened is provably more reliable: Now that the ice extent has dropped below 5M sq km, the new 5M sq km minimum is a lot more precise than the previous 7M sq km estimates that everyone was making just a few weeks ago, when that sure seemed a lot more likely, based on... you know... how cold everything is. Especially up north. And it just seemed like there was going to be a lot of ice. It was an educated guess. But I must cede to the expertise of the weathermen, and I will also change my prediction of the minimum to 5M sq km. (Maybe 5.5M... just to include the factor of "optimism"... even though I think the chances of a 5.5M minimum for the year are not very likely -- less than 50% I'd say -- now that the extent is currently below that value).
Adjusting the predictions now is a fine thing to do, I think. However, commenter "Drew" provides an even better way to not be so damned: "My suggestion is to just remain Honest Anthony." Yes, Dr. Watts could have sailed through this simply by leaving the poll numbers as they were -- good old honest estimates -- and leaving the report of the current ice extent as it was too -- a good old honest measurement -- back when it was 7M sq km. After all, this is just a poll, folks. It doesn't matter what all the warmunists think or what the satellite measurements say. It's about how much ice there is in the Arctic, and the only answer that matters is "it's a lot, because of the new ice age we're in." Whether 7M sq km or 5M or 500 sq m, it's ice and it's cold and it's dangerous and there's too much of it, and it's too bad that the left has scammed congress and got them to pay to set up windmills (fans, basically, blowing cold air all around) all over the place to go and cool down the planet so much when all we want to do is be warm and cozy and exercise our god-given rights to guns and to burning what we want, when we want, and as much of it as we want.
