The consensus of experts says that there is no ice left in the Arctic
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
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.”
http://www.norwegianmoose.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
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.
2011
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
The years roll by and the forecasts of doom are shipwrecked and slowly subsumed by the encroaching Arctic ice.
In five years time we might be Climate Scientist free.
Doe Prince Charles have a view on that?
I think we should be told!
That’s Does not Doe
Well….with proper adjustments by GISS-NASA-NSIDC, and redefine by what we mean as ‘ice free’, i’m sure “the team” and whowever else will accomplish “the cause”…
However, back in the real world, summer ice will melt and winter ice will accumulate, like it has every year since the beginning of time…some years less, some years more…this poster child has ‘Left the building’
I see we’ve entered the fact-free zone yet again. As NASA did not PREDICT the Ice Free Arctic and Zwally was discussing the rate as of 2007 and hedged their words with the words “could be” which IF it had been maintained WOULD have given that result. A little detail that applies to many of your sources. Even one of your included images mentions 2030, the more correct number… is that an oversight on your part?
That truth wouldn’t let you make fun of actual science though, so lets ignore that little problem.
The modeling of climate science and the IPCC give us around 2030 – 2040 for ice-free and that projection (not prediction) is based on more than just the mechanical tracings of statistics.
I am not planning to participate in any more discussion of this sort of foolishness. You have your conspiracy theory and there’s no way to dissuade a true conspiracy theorist. Enjoy the delusion.
I provided similar forecasts by many leading experts over the last 50 years. But feel free to keep your head buried if it makes you feel better.
I look forward to you denouncing Hansen’s sea level forecasts – which are far outside the IPCC projections.
The only people talking about conspiracies are people from your side of the debate. Where do you come up with this crap?
Bruce,
I think this post is fairplay: somebody makes dire predictions, gets the press hipped and some innocents worried…then the fateful date approaches and, guess what?: nothing happens!
I have been following this “scientific” nonsense since climategate, I´m a biologist (many of my friends are too) but the warmists have convinced me that theirs is not a clean science. There is more common sense in the skeptic´s camp than in the CAGW advocate-scientist one. Shame on the latter for what they are doing to “Science”, and shame on those scientific journals that are playing their game.
“The modeling of climate science and the IPCC give us around 2030 – 2040 for ice-free and that projection (not prediction) is based on more than just the mechanical tracings of statistics.”
So when 2030-2040 comes along and these still NO Sea-ice free Arctic.
The modeling will come up with another projection of say 2060-2080 and so on and so on. And if and when one of those projections does come true.More by chance than anything. Well they’ll be crowing… “Yeah see I told you the models were right”. Even if it happens to be 300 yrs from now. 🙂
Please feel free to delude yourself that you’re somehow seeing Steve’s point, instead of attempting to make it for him
http://youtu.be/ztz3ZdPbdKo
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071212-AP-arctic-melt.html