Scientists ranting about an ice free Arctic is a psychosis that has been going on for almost as long as there have been scientists.
http://news.google.com/newspapers
NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com
Because climate change in the Arctic region is occurring faster and to a greater extent than anywhere else, the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free for a short period of time as early as the summer of 2015, according to the 2009 Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Report completed by the eight Arctic Council Nations.
http://www.350.org/sites/all/files/science-factsheet-updated2011.pdf
MONDAY, MARCH 17, 2008
Polar ice cap melting away in 2008 ?The latest salvo comes courtesy of Xinhua, which reports that Olav Orheim, the head of the Norwegian International Polar Year Secretariat, is placing his money on this summer. Noting that its ice sheet had reached a historical low of 3m sq. km last summer – it covered around 7.5m sq. km as recently as 2000 – Orheim told Xinhua that “if Norway’s average temperature this year equals that in 2007, the ice cap in the Arctic will all melt away.” Barring this disaster, Orheim predicted that excess carbon dioxide emissions and higher average temperatures would unpredictably alter the region’s fragile ecosystems. On a separate note, he said that Asia would likely be hardest hit by rising sea levels, estimating that a one meter rise would affect “nearly 100 million people on an area of 800,000 square km in Asia and direct economic loss will amount to 400 billion U.S. dollars.”
December 15, 2009
There are many kinds of truth. Al Gore was poleaxed by an inconvenient one yesterday.
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change “spin” row.
Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
Global warming is a direct threat to biodiversity in all corners of the world, but nowhere are its effects more visible than in the Arctic, where the impacts of the climate crisis are hitting earlier and with greater intensity than anywhere else. Winter temperatures have increased by almost 10 degrees Fahrenheit since 1949. And by the end of this century, the Far North’s annual average temperatures are expected to rise 9 degrees or more over land and up to 13 degrees over water.
We can see the frightening effects of the Arctic’s rising temperatures in the quick and devastating melt of the region’s sea ice. In 2008, Arctic summer sea ice reached the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era — and winter sea ice reached its lowest recorded extent in 2011. Now climate scientists say the Arctic could be completely ice free in the summer by 2012.
A DEATH SENTENCE FOR SPECIES
With its unforgiving winds, tremendous cold, winters that never see the sun, and summers that never see the end of it, the Arctic seems like a hard place to eke out a living. Yet it’s home to highly specialized species that have evolved to make the most of their harsh environment, including its vast expanses of sea ice. Without enough sea ice, the entire Arctic ecosystem will unravel and its species will die.
http://news.google.com/newspapers
the summer melt could lead to ice-free Arctic seas by 2016 – “plus or minus three years”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13002706
2011
There are credible scientists who are now predicting an ice-free (summer) arctic by as early as 2013. The implications are mind boggling. The impact on wildlife, humans and the rest of the world’s weather patterns is impossible to predict for specific areas and to exact detail.
http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2931050
Tsk tsk. Let’s take it one word at a time:
Ice: According to Doughy Toucan, ice is the triple point of a gas, where everything is equal.
Free: Bong Lid Will Win tells me it was Slavery in the 1960s because of Christian Supremecists[sic] that Orwell warned me about.
Arctic: How deniers spell Artic.
Forecasts: Look, he might have been quoted in print a few times over the last two decades, confirmed it as such explicitly when asked, predicated papers on exactly the notion, but it’s NOT A PREDICTION, it’s a SCENAREO[sic], you stupid wing nuts!
I think it is possible that one or two of the members of the Chicken Little Brigade made some sort of prediction for an ice free summer Arctic. Maybe if you want to be an ice researcher you have to make a drastic unrealistic prediction.
Steve,
good work,
i see three scientists who you list here. the rest are all media articles based on them, or from before the coming ice age scare that you insist was being perpetrated by the alarmists, so I don’t really think they count, do you?
there is Fortier, Maslowski, and Dr. Olav Orheim. all quite established scientists, all making predictions of an ice free summer Arctic by 2015. i still consider this a tiny minority of climate scientists, but I do grant you it is alarmist and not based on reasonable science. Maslowski’s graph with his trend line seems ludicrous to me. It is certainly conceivable, but a much more reasonable extrapolation seems to me to be between 2020 and 2030, and I think that is actually closer to what the large majority of climate scientists, with some still saying after 2050.
Maybe Julienne has thoughts on this subject.
The eternal unfalsifiability of a theory that will eternally shift its predictions into the future.
Oops, sorry, even the newspaper article says “frightening projection”, not even a prediction, so the products of AGW theory step out of falsifiability RIGHT FROM THE START – THEY DON’T EVEN PRETEND TO BE SCIENTISTS.
Sure. 2050 is perfect. Everyone of these linear extrapolationists in heart can continue to get research funding till they retire, egt their pensions and it will still not be the day of reckoning for their forecasts… can’t do better than that. Harold Camping will be envious.
Good thread to bookmark, thanks Steve.
Ignore the dummy above me. Apparently without a press release sent to his personal computer from alarmists, he will never believe they said anything.
In reality of course he is just an enabler, who will justify the alarmists going underground and stating nothing on the record.
Speaking of stating nothing on the record, I wonder how much of an inconvenience it has been for the team to do all their backdoor manipulating through Gmail.
Blade,
I assume you are referring to me.
So what is innacurate about my comment? And how am I justifying alarmists. Because I don’t count media sources that are repeating what a few individuals say? I am happy to condemn the media sources as being alarmist. they do that all the time about all sorts of issues. That is how they sell papers
TonyD’s theme song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6j1jjLAf8Q
Tony, what Steve and his cheerleaders don’t want to see is the real issue. The Arctic is melting, period. The issue is not that 3 scientists have come short of the date whereas the majority of scientists where at first overestimating the but now have a better idea.
If 3 volcanologists predict that a volcano, that has been quiet for 6,000 years, is going to erupt disastrously 3 years from now but other experts are predicting 5-10 years. Then, some wanna be volcanologist claims, contradicting himself, that the volcano will:
a. Never blow up.
b. Blow up in the distant future.
c. If it blows up soon it won’t matter because it’s happened before and the world did not come to an end.
Well guess what? It doesn’t matter that it does not happen in 3 years but actually happens 12 in 12 years. The point is that phony ‘expert’ is simply being a contrarian while the real experts where off by a couple of years.
The Arctic melts every summer and freezes every winter. It is very confusing for the simple minded
IWB,
I am not interested in convincing Steve or anyone else here about anything. I come here because I get information that I don’t from other places, and because I am fascinated by how entrenched beliefs lead to bizarre back and forth’s (they are clearly not discussions) about issues that are obvious to anyone who does not have a deep emotional stake in their beliefs being absolutely correct.
But I also support calling out those that are making statements that are not based on solid science in order to try to get people to wake up and do something. The fact that Steve pointed out three scientists that are basically predicting an ice free arctic in the next few years is important for people to know. Maslowski’s trend line is not science, it is wishful thinking.
I just looked at Nevin’s site and he posted this new report. http://neven1.typepad.com/. I actually take this report with a grain of salt, without reading it. But the fact that in a couple of years you can have some scientists saying one thing and then another group saying something very different makes it really easy to claim that the whole thing is bogus. I am sure Steve will do exactly that with that report. I liken it to anti nazi’s blaring that Hitler was going to invade poland in 1936. 1936 comes and goes and then people can claim that Hitler is really no danger. He maybe a bully but nothing that needs extraordinary measures.
if the issue was not so politicized I would tend to agree with you, but the dynamics of this issue are so emotional on both sides that the actual science is being pressured toward certain results. I see that happen in a different way with regard to evolution. many Biologists have made a big point of the fact that human evolution is not special. We are just an ordinary species that has gone through a process just like every other. It was VITAL to make sure there could be no taint of “specialness” that creationists could use. The reality however is that while the genetic and biological processes are perfectly natural, the actual circumstances of human evolution are nothing short of extraordinary and represent a huge leap into a wholly new realm where the emergent properties of intelligence changed the game completely. I think it is comparable (somewhat arbitrary determinations) to multicellular organisms, the development of vision, neural clusters that turned into brains and behavioral innovation such as play. I think that conscious choice to protect against creationism has held back clearer understanding of human nature. And I think in a different way that happens with climate change as well. People like Hansen and maybe the above scientist are SURE ACC is occurring and will be devastating, Lindzen, Christie and Spencer equally convinced that they have to stop them.
I do think that the reality is slowly being revealed, and within 10 years or so, because so much energy is being focused on the problem, and it is, after all, just a question of natural phenomenom.
Looks like the ice area is going to drop below 2007.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
I wonder how long we have until the NW passage opens up? Amundsen would be amused.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
Oh yes, the extent is still trailing 2006.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
I wonder how smaller the ice cap would get if we had the winds this year that we had in 2007?
Face it Steve,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7GJcKuVGm8