April 7, 2009
Scientists have begun debating how soon the Arctic will lose its summer ice altogether, with some saying it could happen as early as 2015. White House science adviser John P. Holdren told the crowd at the State Department that the total disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic “may be far, far closer” than scientists thought just a few years ago.
Speaking of global warming scientists being wrong:
Snowing later in the season, ski industry not doomed.
ASPEN — Aspen Mountain will reopen for skiing this weekend with a better base depth of snow on Memorial Day than it had on New Year’s Day.
The base depth has hovered around 70 inches at the mountaintop since the Aspen Skiing Co. announced last week it will extend the skiing season. The base was 38 inches on Jan. 1.
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20110527/NEWS/110529856/1077&ParentProfile=1058
I believe I read somewhere that extending the current PIOMAS trend leads to zero volume by 2016…so we’ll see how reliable that model is in relatively short order.
-Scott
I’ll bet you $1000.00 it’s wrong.
I’m definitely not taking that bet, but I wanted to inform people of what some others are claiming about the ice. I watch it with interest.
-Scott
Dang, it would have been easy money!
;O)
Rob was making a big deal about betting on the ice over at WUWT’s thread. You might be able to bet with him.
-Scott
we know from spectroscopy that they are out in space- save your $1k
Holdren has been sowing the seeds of fear for decades:
In the 1971 essay, “Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide,” Dr. Holdren and his co-author, the ecologist Paul Ehrlich, warned of a coming ice age.
They certainly weren’t the only scientists in the 1970s to warn of a coming ice age, but I can’t think of any others who were so creative in their catastrophizing. Although they noted that the greenhouse effect from rising emissions of carbon dioxide emissions could cause future warming of the planet, they concluded from the mid-century cooling trend that the consequences of human activities (like industrial soot, dust from farms, jet exhaust, urbanization and deforestation) were more likely to first cause an ice age. Dr. Holdren and Dr. Ehrlich wrote:
The effects of a new ice age on agriculture and the supportability of large human populations scarcely need elaboration here. Even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.
And in 2015, they will say it will be ice free in 2020. Then 2025. And so on.
Current extent trends indicate a zero value near 2030…though obviously that’s much more extrapolation than 2016. Many of us may get to see how that pans out.
-Scott
The Earth is curved.
Scott, Which extent trends are you looking at? These?
[IMG]http://i54.tinypic.com/24uvmep.jpg[/IMG]
So the extent trend that number came from was the polynomial fit to the September data that Tamino uses. He admits that extrapolation to 2030 (or maybe it was 2029) is too far, but that doesn’t keep his followers from doing so. The PIOMAS trend extrapolation number I saw also came from his site, though I think it was one of the commentors who said that.
-Scott
Scott:
Weather is a variable thing that follows multidecadal patterns. Whatever trend is claimed today is only part of the entire pattern and you can expect the trend to reverse soon if it has not already.
Even if the ice extent becomes closer to zero that is keeping with long term patterns observed over 200 thousand years.