IPCC AR4 Commenter: “I do not understand why this trend is insignificant – it is more than three times the quoted error estimates”. Chip Knappenberger found an error in the IPCC AR4 Chapter 4 First Order Draft! The draft said:

“The Antarctic results show a slight but insignificant positive trend of 0.7 ± 0.2% per decade.”

Dr. John Church said ‘hey, isn’t that significant?’ Therefore the IPCC are liars! They’re now up to 3 alleged errors out of thousands of evidentiary statements! Or is it 4 alleged errors? They’re coming in so fast (not) that I can’t keep up. As an aside I have to say members of the climate conspiracy who actually scrutinize our overlord’s statements won’t get their bonus cheques. Follow your scripts people!

Here’s the final version (emphasis mine). Damning, or… not?

The negative trend in the NH is significant at the 90% confidence level whereas the small positive trend in the SH is not significant (updated from Comiso, 2003).

A fuller statement (both are from page 351 – page 15 of the PDF – of Chapter 4 of Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is this:

There is a significant decreasing trend in arctic sea ice extent of -33 ± 7.4 × 10³ km²/yr (equivalent to -2.7 ± 0.6% per decade), whereas the antarctic results show a small positive trend of 5.6 ± 9.2 × 10³ km²/yr (0.47 ± 0.8% per decade), which is not statistically significant.

Sea Ice Extent, Northern & Southern Hemispheres. Pg 351, Chapter 4: The Physical Science Basis of IPCC AR4. Which trend is significant?

The second part of this accusation is that any increase in Antarctic sea ice is proof of “no warming” and a disproof on the criminal climate model predictions. Sorry, this is not a predicted response. The Antarctic sea ice is known to be more sensitive to ocean circulation than it is to temperature. This has been discussed as far back as 1992 (Manabe et al., 1992).